


i'm eating my heart out, thinking of you

by mysteriousnight



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-War, Repression, yes this is a bj goes to maine fic :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:02:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 40,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28441341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysteriousnight/pseuds/mysteriousnight
Summary: After the war, back in California, BJ feels lost, as if a part of him is still in Korea, or more accurately, a part of him is in Maine. He has to go and finally see him again, but there is so much stopping him, BJ doesn't know if he can make it there and still be able to stand himself.
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Comments: 26
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> who would have thought Mash would be the first piece of media i would post more than one story for? i sure didn't, but im having a blast being here
> 
> this was going to be a just single chapter but i just kept on making it longer, so it's posted as two chapters to make it easier to read. i had a lot of fun writing this, even though i wrote way more than i thought i would, and i hope you enjoy reading it!

_to eat one’s heart out: to suffer from excessive longing for someone or something unattainable_

BJ throws away the first letter before he even makes it halfway down the page. It’s not that the words won’t come; the words come and come, overflowing his pen, his mind, the desk, the room, the world. He has enough words to fill thousands of letters, but none of them are right; he can’t put them in the right order, find the right phrases to say what he means. What do you say to someone who knows you better than anyone, who you have known only for a couple years, but it feels like a lifetime? What do you say to someone who you love but cannot say those words; when every word you write sounds like a confession of the thing you cannot say? He doesn’t want to confess. He can’t confess.

The next letter stops at the bottom of the page. The decision to either write on the back or get a new piece of paper stumps him. Every decision feels like he is choosing between life or death, like his actions have meaning deeper than he could ever grasp. 

He throws that letter away too.

Peg calls him before he could start the third attempt, so he leaves the room, the empty piece of paper positioned in the middle of the desk. Maybe the words will sound right after dinner, after his stomach is filled with food and he has spent a few moments in the company of his wife and daughter. So he goes to dinner; he sits at the head of the table, his wife across from him, his daughter in her highchair at his side. A family of three: perfect and peaceful, the America that is advertised. He smiles, able to forget the letter in the next room, the lack of a letter in the next room; the contents of the letter stuffed in his mind, the contents of the letter nowhere to be found. 

“What are you doing in there?” Peg asks, her fork poking at her food. BJ is holding Erin’s spoon in his hand, the plastic utensil hovering in the air in front of her face, her annoyance growing that the food is not coming to her mouth anymore. BJ doesn’t notice. His mind is back on that letter, the two letters sitting in the trash. He feels like he should burn them, get rid of any evidence. But why? There is nothing in those letters, nothing that would turn anyone suspicious.

The very act of writing a letter seems wrong. Sinful. Shameful. Like he is committing a horrendous crime. Maybe he is, maybe he should be arrested, thrown in jail, sentenced to life. For what crime? He hasn’t done anything wrong, he needs to remind himself this. A letter is just that: words on a page. He is just trying to contact someone, someone who he promised to contact, someone who he hasn’t the courage to contact.

BJ moves his hand forward, finally giving Erin the food she was seconds away from crying for. “Just going through some things.”

He doesn’t know why he lies. It’s just a letter. It’s just a letter. _It is just a letter_. He repeats that to himself, but it doesn’t make him feel any better. 

It’s more than a letter.

He doesn’t go back to his office until Peg has gone to bed. And he’s standing in the doorway of Erin’s room, watching the crib and her small, sleeping body within it, the night light creating the smallest bubble of light, encompassing the sleeping figure. He lingers, hesitating, nothing is stopping him from writing now. Erin rolls over in her sleep; BJ steps out of the doorway and walks back to his office. The house is silent. He can hear the big grandfather clock Peg’s mother gave them ticking away in the living room. The house seems impossibly big when it is this quiet. He hates it.

The paper is still there, the same blank white page sitting in the middle of his desk. There is an ink spot in the bottom corner, and maybe that imperfection could be enough to prevent BJ from writing anything; smaller things have made him do worse. But the second he sits down, the pen in his hand, he realizes the want to write this letter has turned into a need. He _needs_ to contact him, tell him something, prove him wrong that they won’t see each other again. 

The letter becomes twelve pages, the words written on the front and back, shoved in margins, letters tiny at the bottom. Six pieces of paper, words flowing in paragraphs too many to count, the page heavy with ink, envelope heavy with paper, address heavy with love. He doesn’t reread it, couldn’t bring himself to look back on what he has written, afraid of what he admitted, what he said in those pages. He seals them away without another look and sets the envelope in the desk drawer, hidden away until he can mail it in the morning.

Two weeks go by and there is no reply. But BJ waits. He’s okay with waiting; he could wait a lifetime if he knew he was going to get a reply one day, and he has to believe he will get a reply. Why wouldn’t he? He has to reply to BJ, or what did everything that happened between them mean? What was all the ways he looked at him when no one could see them, or all the times he said something and the words felt charged, like they held secrets that BJ wanted to know about but couldn’t make his mouth work to ask about them. What did that all mean if he wasn’t going to reply now? Because it was BJ who sent the letter, BJ who reached out first, and it was BJ who always believed they would see each other again and that has to mean something, right? That has to warrant a response at least.

A month passes and Peg begins to notice something is wrong. Every day he asks about the mail, and each time Peg passes him the stack of letters from that day. There’s always nothing, no letter addressed to him. Well, no letter addressed to him from anyone that matters, from the certain guy from Maine he can’t stop thinking about.

It is a month to the day when Peg sits down next to him in the evening, Erin already put to bed and sleeping soundly. BJ is sitting in their living room, a journal in his lap, reading a lengthy article about the developments in organ transplants. There is a fire in their fireplace that BJ doesn’t remember setting, but it is casting orange light around the room and BJ could almost feel at peace if he could just stop shaking his leg or flipping ahead in the article to see how long he has left. He’s more nervous nowadays, always waiting for some disaster to happen, to be called into surgery with casualties lined up for hours, for a bomb to go off nearby, for anything to happen to disturb the quiet peace of the moment. 

He can’t sit still, but when Peg sits beside him and throws her arm around his shoulders, her fingers dancing lightly across his arm, his heart begins to slow down and he thinks that maybe he could go to sleep tonight without any nightmares. But then she talks and that illusion of peace is broken.

“Is something wrong, BJ?” Peg asks, her voice is hesitant, the words asked carefully, like he is a piece of glass, like he is going to crack at any given moment. Is he? He doesn’t know at this point; he has been holding himself together for so long he is scared to break down, not knowing if he could put himself together again. Maybe he has always been afraid of the future, or maybe that’s just another side effect of the war, just one more to add to the list.

“Why are you asking, Peg?” He dodges the question, puts on a smile and everything. But Peg knows him better than that, and the way she looks at him now is a reminder of just that. Her eyes stare at him, telling him to be serious, to just answer the damn question because she is worried about him.

She doesn’t give him a chance to come up with what to say, words that wouldn’t technically be a lie, but still conceal what he is feeling. The right words get harder and harder to think of each day. Peg knows just what to say, though, she always does. “What are you waiting for in the mail?”

BJ tries not to seem shocked, tries to not let those words have any effect over him. But it doesn’t work, and Peg’s arm is tighter around him now, one hand on his shoulder and the other grabbing his hand. Her hand covers the back of his, her fingers slipping in between his own. He tries not to show that his skin is crawling and all he wants to do is run now, just get out of the house and never stop until his heart has quieted and he can think of anything else beside that letter he had put in the mail. He does a better job at concealing that, because Peg just comes closer to him, and if he was any meaner he would push her away, or if he had any control over his limbs at this moment he would push her away, but he isn’t that mean and he can’t seem to move his arms, so he lets her slid against his side like her touch could cure him of all his problems.

And that might be the root of his problem: that her touch doesn’t cure him anymore. That he is craving the touch of another, a touch that he never really felt in the first place, not how he wanted to, not in all the ways he needs to be touched. He feels sick at this thought, that he wants someone’s touch so much, that he wants a man’s touch so much, that he doesn't want Peg’s touch. He wants to be okay with Peg’s touch, to be comforted and cured by her hand in his own and her lips on his cheek and the way their fingers sometimes graze when she passes him his cup of coffee in the morning. But these days her touch keeps reminding him of that other touch, a touch that happened and didn’t all at once. How their hands used to touch when passing martini glasses back and forth. All the times he held his hand, no matter how short the grasp lasted or how close to death they seemed at that moment, or all the times he had wanted to hold that hand, or feel those lips on his cheek, his lips. 

“BJ?” Peg’s soft voice takes him out of his thoughts. He is back in California, in his living room, his wife at his side. He isn’t in Korea anymore, in a tent or the OR or post-op, with him at his side. He needs to get used to this life again, his California life. But it has been six months and he thought he would be better by now, not wrecked by memory and a deep ache he keeps trying to forget.

“I’m sorry Peg. What did you say?” He knows what she said, but he can’t make himself talk about it, feels like he is about to be set on fire just thinking about it. And the shame is building inside him, because why is he writing to a man, and why didn’t he tell his wife about it? Why? The questions keep coming and the shame keeps growing and he thinks he might just drown in this feeling.

“I asked about the mail.” She is patient. She is calm. She doesn’t know what he is thinking. She doesn’t know his shame. The thought doesn’t make it any better. “What are you waiting for?”

“A letter,” It’s just enough of the truth that he might make it out of this alive. Only if she doesn’t ask any more questions, only if this answer is enough. 

It’s not enough.

“From who?”

The name dies in his throat, dies in his stomach, dies in his heart. He can’t say it. He can’t think it. He can’t— the name looms over him and if he speaks it outloud then the last of whatever self control he has left would evaporate. He can’t have that. He can’t.

“An old friend,” He says and it feels like the worst lie he has ever told, like God himself is going to come down from Heaven and cast him into the pits of Hell for a lie so damning. Maybe that would have been a better fate than what Peg asks next. It sure would have hurt less.

“What made you write to them all of a sudden? Why now?” Peg isn’t as close to him as she was before, having moved back so there are a few inches between their bodies. Her arm isn’t across his shoulders, but her hand is still over his. Her thumb moves along the side of his hand and that is all he can think about for a moment, the casual affection she is showing him, how unaware she is about what is going on inside his mind. 

The shame is eating away at him, like a moth eating clothes in a dusty attic and soon he will be littered with holes and someone will have to throw him away because there is no salvaging that, no coming back after this. He wants to bite his tongue, he wants to sink into the floor. He wants to feel normal again. He wants to feel okay.

Instead he smiles, as best as he can. Because he needs to answer her question, and maybe all he can give her is a lie, or maybe all he can give her is the truth, but he doesn’t know which is which and maybe he never has because his mind plays tricks on him and likes to bury thing, keeping them hidden, confuse him with his own thoughts and actions until he doesn’t know what is the truth and what is the lie and each one is wrapped up in layers of the other. Sometimes he feels like his whole life is a sham and one day someone is going to finally reveal who is hiding behind the curtain and see who he truly is. And maybe Korea was where this had almost happened, and he had come close to seeing who BJ is underneath everything he keeps inside and all the pretense he puts on. Maybe BJ just wants to stop lying, stop hiding himself. Maybe that is all this is. 

“I’ve been missing him,” It’s the truth, or most of it, some of it, part of it. He does miss him, but he has been missing him from the moment he left him, from before that even, from the second the war ended and the reality that they were going home once and for all started to sink in and all BJ could think about was that he was leaving him. And maybe he started missing him from the moment he first met him, because it was inevitable, really. They were always going to leave each other, whether by death or from going home from the war, and the second BJ met him he realized he never wanted to be away from him, so he started to miss him even then, even when he was still at his side, even when he was still in grief about missing someone else.

But BJ isn’t just missing him. Just missing him didn’t make him write the letter. It was the dreams he is having, or they might be memories, or they might be both because they feel real and they scare him to his core and when he wakes up he is covered in sweat and he can still feel the phantom touch of him. And it wasn’t just the dreams, but the shame too that comes with the dreams. The shame that fills him and chokes him and leaves him feeling worse than he has ever felt before. Because he shouldn’t feel this way, like he is missing a part of him, like he has left something in Korea and he is never getting it back. He has Peg, and he has Erin and what more could he want? What more could he ever ask for? What more has he ever asked for? 

He shouldn’t be wrought with grief for someone still alive; he should be happy and loving and not feeling like he is cheating on his wife when he hasn’t even so much as looked at another person like that since he came home. And maybe that’s the problem, that he isn’t looking, that he has no desire to look, not even at Peg. That he is only thinking about one person, and it is a man, and that man is across the country, and that man who lives across the country hasn’t replied to his letter yet. 

“I hope he replies soon.” Peg leans in and kisses his cheek. Her lips are soft and warm and familiar and BJ wishes he wants her to kiss him more, but he doesn’t, and when she moves away from him, when she gets off the couch and leaves the room, BJ wishes he could reach out to her and ask her to stay with him. He can’t, so she leaves and goes into the kitchen and he’s alone again and the night sky out the window is so black he feels like he is being eaten alive.

Three months and no letter. Three months and he is starting to think that maybe he had imagined everything. That maybe he wasn’t as close with him as he thought he was, that what they were over there meant something different over here. And he is driving himself mad thinking about all that happened between the two of them, and all the words that had died in his throat before he could say them, and all the time that has passed between seeing him last and this moment right now. 

He feels sick, whether from missing him or from the guilt that is starting to pour in, and he wants to throw up when he thinks about the mail now, but he still looks through it each day, and each time he sees a letter addressed to him, the hope rises like bile in his throat until his eyes find their way up to the top left corner to check who sent the letter and that hope is quickly washed away and replaced by an odd feeling of disappointment and shame and guilt and relief. 

He takes Erin to the zoo four months after he sent the letter. It’s nice to spend time with his daughter, nice to see how grown she is now, how full of life she is. She grabs BJ’s hand in excitement when she sees the monkeys, and he never wants her to let go, wants to hold her hand forever, keep her by his side forever. He was away for so long, and he can never get that time back, can never see Erin’s first tooth grow in or when she ate peas for the first time and spit them back out or all the countless moments he was forced to miss out on. He has missed so much of her life, and each time he looks at her, it is a reminder of that time, that empty space in her life that he was not in. 

The war took so much from him, and he will never get any of it back and he hates that. He feels that hate in his bones; feels it when he looks in the mirror and sees a man stare back at him he doesn’t want to know; feels it in each stitch he sinks into one of his patients and remembers how fast he used to have to work. He feels that hate grow and settle in every inch of him, but what joins it is this conflicting feeling of joy, because BJ never would have met him if he didn’t go off to Korea. He never would have met him and he cannot even think about that for too long or he will punch something, because how could he have lived his life without having met him? Go through all his years without knowing him; without hearing his laugh; without sharing meals and looks and jokes and everything else with him; without having loved him? 

So that hate and joy go hand in hand, and sometimes one is more powerful than the other. Most of the time it is the hate, but in those moments when it is the joy, he could maybe, just maybe, imagine a life where he had met him someplace else, some place that didn’t fill him with hate. Some place where they didn’t need to leave each other in the end. But mostly it is the hate, gripping him tight and never letting go, and sometimes he even hates the fact that he had any joy over there, that he still feels joy at times when he thinks of a memory, those few memories where the war wasn’t pressing in and they could just have a nice time being together.

Now that BJ is back, he tries to spend all the time he can with Erin. He reads to her, and takes her on trips, and feeds her, and puts her to bed. He tries to make up for lost time, but with each action he knows it will never be enough. Erin might grow up and never even remember the time in her life where her dad wasn’t there, but BJ won’t forget, the guilt forever weaving its way into everything he does, every kiss he gives her and every spoonful he feeds her. It is guilt and love and a wish that everything could be alright again. But he knows nothing will be alright again, not like it was before.

Everything is so difficult after a war.

BJ arrives home when the sun is setting. Erin is asleep in her car seat when he pulls into the driveway. A stuffed monkey is clutched in her hand, and BJ carefully untangles the seat belt from her, his hands light and delicate, moving the straps around her, trying to not wake her. He lifts her in his arms and she is still asleep. When he starts to walk, her arm moves to grab onto BJ’s shirt and he wants to cry because how could he have ever left Erin? How was he away from home for so long, missed so much? He places his hand on the back of her head and kisses her forehead and hopes that will be enough to show her how much he loves her, how deeply he cares for her. She is a child and doesn't understand these things, and won’t even remember this kiss, but BJ hopes anyways, hopes that his message is communicated, that he is forgiven for being away.

Peg is sitting at the kitchen table when BJ comes inside, a crossword in front of her. She is filling in a word as he passes and doesn’t even look up when she speaks. “A letter came in the mail for you.”

BJ almost drops Erin as he hears her words, for a moment losing all feeling in his arms. He thinks that he might collapse, right there in front of his wife with his daughter in his arms, but he manages to keep control, to act like his word is not spinning in a new direction, or that those words spoken so casually by his wife are affecting him this badly.

He wants to lie down. He wants to run. He wants to punch a wall. He wants to kiss his wife and forget about the letter.

Instead of doing any of that, he puts Erin to bed, taking care to tuck the blanket around her. She hasn’t woken once since the car, and her sleeping face is peaceful. BJ looks at it for a while, like he wants to burn the image in his mind. He already has; he already knows Erin’s face better than his own: the delicate features of her eyes, the teeth that have grown in, her smile and how her eyes close as she laughs. He reaches down and smooths a piece of hair off of her forehead, and then he leaves, walking out of her room, each step harder to take than the last.

His feet feel numb as he walks to the kitchen. Peg is still there, but she is looking at him now, the crossword pushed to the side, and BJ loves her, he really does, because she just points to where the letter is and doesn’t keep him there, doesn’t ask how his day was, how the zoo was, how Erin is. She just points and smiles and lets him take the letter and leave the room.

It’s from him. He knows it even before he looks at the return address, can tell by the way his name is written on the front, the way the numbers of his address slope in a certain direction and the letters loops a little too much. He would know that handwriting anywhere. He holds the envelope in his hands, standing now in his office, the door shut behind him. 

It feels holy, holding this letter, standing there in the dim light of the room, a desperation filling him, making his hands shake. But it feels sinful as well, like maybe he should just throw the letter away before he even opens it and can still save himself. Save himself from what? He is already ruined: wrecked and destroyed by their very first meeting. There is no saving; maybe he could have been saved once, but that time was years ago and all he has now is an unopened letter and the beating of his heart.

BJ sits before he opens it, his hands still shaking as he tears open the envelope and pulls out the pages. A page falls to the ground and before he can pick it up, he is staring at the writing of the man he saw write thousands of letters, and the fact that this letter is for him starts to sink in. It is written for him, for his eyes to read, for them to communicate once again after almost a year of silence. BJ feels like he could cry for a thousand years, feels something split open inside him as he reads the first line of the letter: _I miss you_.

He didn’t even say “Dear BJ” or even “Beej”. He didn’t bother with addressing him, because why would he? They stopped doing that after a while, starting conversations with the other as if mid sentence, no intro, no preamble, no preparation. And the other always picked it up, never hesitating or confused about what was happening, what they were talking about. They fit together in a way BJ had never experienced before, worked together seamlessly, like they had known each other for hundreds of years before this point. 

BJ hadn’t addressed him in his own letter, and maybe it was more because he couldn’t bring himself to say his name yet, or think his name, or even write his name, than it was about them fitting together like two pieces of a puzzle. BJ smiles before he reads on, still staring at that first line, those three words staring back at him and he keeps looking like they may offer him salvation, or at least an answer to what he is feeling, or why he is feeling like this. But they offer him nothing, nothing more than a deep ache and tears in his eyes.

He reads, and reads and then rereads and rereads until he has read the letter ten times, front to back, absorbing each word, letting the meaning sink into him. Halfway through his third read through, BJ stops to laugh at a joke he had written him, and for a moment he feels like he is back in the Swamp, back sitting beside him, a martini glass in hand, the war momentarily forgotten as their world is just the two of them for that single moment: their laughs and their jokes and their shoulders bumping together as BJ doubles over in laughter. 

The second he sets the letter down, the paper removed from his hands, his skin feeling empty without the touch of something against it, the second he does so, the shame sinks in. Shame at the feeling of joy he got when he read the letter. Shame at how he chose the letter over talking with Peg, or watching over Erin. Shame that his heart is still beating so fast. Shame that he feels something he hasn’t in a while, not since he left Korea, and shame that that feeling could very well be love. Shame that a letter from a man thousands of miles away could make him feel so at peace when not even his wife can.

Shame that he is like this.

BJ places his head in his hands, the heels digging into his eyes. It is overwhelming, feeling like this, feeling so happy yet ripping at the seams. He wishes it wasn’t like this, feeling torn in two, wanting so much but denying himself everything. 

Maybe this is what dying feels like, this suffocating tightness in his lungs and his head pounding in rhythm to his heart and everything in him telling him to do one thing, yet his heart saying another. And maybe dying is a destruction of self; dying is finally admitting he can’t be the same person he was before he left, can’t feel the same things, can’t love his wife like he is meant to. And he needs to tell someone this, but he can’t, he can’t even make his mouth move and he’s scared if he finally does, the only thing that will come out is a sob. 

But what does he do now? What does he do now that he has received a reply? He was waiting for so long, and now the reward is finally here, but he feels just as lost as before. He knows what he wants to do: to visit, to hop on a plane or a bus or train or even take his own car and drive out to Maine, follow the return address from the letter all the way back to him and finally see him again.

He can’t do that. He has a wife here, and a daughter, and what would it mean for him to just drop everything and leave to visit a friend after one letter? It would mean he is lost. It would mean he can’t come home. It would mean tearing his life apart. It would mean everything he can’t bring himself to think about, everything about himself and what he keeps hidden, and everything that happened over in Korea that he keeps trying to forget but the memories just won’t go away. And it means confessing this love, a love he cannot even let himself feel directly, only in passing, love pushed aside, a peripheral love.

He can’t do that. Oh, how that is what he always thinks: so many times in his life he has thought he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t graduate medical school. Couldn’t be a father. Couldn’t go to Korea. Couldn’t keep sane during a war. Couldn’t leave him. Couldn’t say goodbye. But he has done all of that, all he thought he couldn’t do. And yet, he still insists he can’t, because this is different from all of that. It feels different, feels important, feels sacred, feels like he is going to die any second. He says he can’t, and he thinks he means it this time. He can’t do this, cannot go to Maine, because it would mean changing everything he has known for so long. It would mean changing not only his life, but Peg’s and Erin’s in ways that could never be fixed. And he isn’t ready to do that, maybe could never be ready to do that. He just can’t, not with this. This is finally his last straw, the unmovable object blocking his unstoppable force. 

BJ stands and rubs his eyes. His legs are shaky, almost numb. Inside him, an unmistakable pain is coursing through him, gripping his heart and forcing him to take shallow breaths. He isn’t alright, no where close, but he has to push through this. He has a duty to his wife, to stay here and be her husband and be what he is supposed to be: kind and loving and the perfect man. It was so easy to perform that role before. But maybe he is tired of pretending, tired of performing and just wants to rest.

He shakes his head at that thought. He has to keep going, at least for a little while. Let himself calm down before he decides what to do next. The letter has rattled him, shaken him to his core, and he needs time to settle his thoughts. No rash decisions, no emotional outbreaks. And he needs to see if this feeling will last. This desperation to leave, to visit him, to see him again. Because it might just be the letter, the piece of paper bringing up old emotions, making him nostalgic. He might think differently later, when the letter isn’t staring at him and he feels like he can take a deep breath again. 

That night, BJ lays in bed listening to Peg’s easy breathing beside him. When he left his office, she hadn’t asked about the letter, instead asking about his day, and he felt himself calming down, his heart stopped hammering so loudly in his chest. And then they went to bed and he feels okay, better than before, almost like he could live like this, spend the rest of his life like this. That performing isn’t so bad, because he loves Peg, and he loves Erin, and maybe he could forget that he loves him as well.

And then Peg moves over towards him, her head settling on his shoulder and her arm draped across his waist, and he feels something in him break because he doesn’t feel anything at this movement, at her affection and her closeness. For so long he thought if he felt like this, it would mean he was broken, wrong, a hopeless cause, unable to feel love properly. But he knows that isn’t true, because BJ knows if he had _his_ arm around him, _his_ head on his shoulder, then he wouldn’t be feeling like this, so empty and guilty and lost. He would feel love.

BJ closes his eyes and draws in a breath. It hurts to breathe sometimes, like his life is closing in on him and trying to suffocate him, but he is surprised to find that it doesn’t hurt this time. There is no pain to breath in, no hesitation or closed throat. Nothing except air filling his lungs and oxygen rushing to his head. He wraps his arm around Peg and holds her and lets himself sit in this empty feeling.

Two weeks go by. He let’s two weeks go by without doing anything. He’s a coward, that is all he can think about: how scared he is and how much easier it would be if he could just ignore it. Ignore the way he is feeling; the way he isn’t feeling; the horrible feeling of betrayal towards Peg he gets every time she holds his hand, or kisses him, or shows him kindness.

He reads the letter every day. He shouldn’t, he doesn’t want to, but he always finds himself in his office, holding the pages in his hands, the words looking back at him. Each time feels like a revelation to how lost he already is, how much he loves a man thousands of miles away, how much he wishes to be holding him instead of this letter, paper a poor substitute for flesh. 

It’s raining when he decides to tell Peg. He is standing just outside his house, the roof still protecting him from the falling rain, his head turned up towards the sky, watching the rainfall in the twilight, and he thinks about the weather in Maine. How this rain might reach there in the next few days, how a man there could step outside his own house and watch the same storm BJ is seeing. It makes the distance seem smaller, traversable. If rain could travel all the miles that sit between them, then he can too, because nature and love are the two most powerful forces on this planet.

BJ heads inside and finds Peg in the living room. Her feet are curled under her as she sits on the couch, a book in her hands, and BJ wants to remember this image forever, what might be the last image of Peg when their marriage is still intact, still whole. She looks up when he comes in, a smile, sweet and loving, coming over her face. BJ wishes he could keep that smile there, knowing that he is going to be the one to take it away, the one to cause her pain. This thought alone almost makes him stop, cutting off all the words in his throat, his guilt rising inside him until he feels nauseous. He wishes it doesn't have to be like this.

It does.

When he sits, Peg places her book to the side, her legs moving so her feet are on the floor again. She is looking at him like she already knows what he is going to say before he has even said a word, and that might be worse than if she was shocked or confused or angry. BJ’s hands feel numb and he feels his heart in his throat and he is waiting for something to happen, for a bomb to be dropped or an ambulance to come or to be woken up from the worst dream he has ever had, but nothing happens because he isn’t asleep and he isn’t in Korea. All he is is scared and he is at home and he needs to get the words out before he chickens out and resigns to live like this forever and feel his happiness drain out of him.

“I need to go to Maine.” 

Peg frowns for a moment, the corners of her mouth moving downward almost imperceptibly, her eyes moving towards the space he left between them when he sat down, hands wringing together. And then she looks at him. “Okay.” The word is soft and she reaches out and grabs one of his hands and smiles at him like everything _is_ okay, like what he said isn’t strange, hasn’t come out of nowhere, won’t ruin their relationship and everything they have been building for years and years.

BJ can’t say anything yet, his mouth feels like it is full of cotton and all the words have drained out of his mind because this isn’t how it should be going. This conversation shouldn’t be this quiet. It should be full of screams and throwing furniture and being all he has sworn not to be: angry and violent and destructive and dangerous. But the conversation is quiet, the words soft and Peg is holding his hand and her touch is calm and stops his hands from shaking. Her eyes scream loud with care, much louder than any shout of hate could ever be.

Calm, he didn’t think it would be calm. It has been so long since he stopped anticipating calm, now expecting anything but. He isn’t used to calm, not any more, not after spending years in a war that never knew calm from the moment it began. But Peg is used to calm; she is used to peace and quiet and a perseverance that powers through everything, from being left to raise their daughter by herself to being told her husband needs to leave again. She takes everything with precision, studies what is happening, where they are at, what needs to happen next. And she does it all with love; every act of patience and perseverance done in the name of love.

“When are you leaving?” She asks, and BJ feels his heart starts to beat again, because she isn’t saying no. She isn’t denying him this; she isn’t keeping him here; she isn’t even asking who or why or how. Just when. Nothing more needs to be said: she trusts him. She loves him.

“A few days, I think.” When he finally speaks, his words are rough, breaking through his choked throat, thick with emotion. BJ exhales and sags in his seat, his body curling over, the hand Peg isn’t holding coming up to his face, his elbow on his knee supporting his weight. He can’t do this. He has to do this. “God, Peg,” He whispers the words, his voice unable to go any louder, both coming out as a sob. 

BJ doesn’t let himself cry, because he thinks he won’t be able to stop crying if he starts. Nothing makes sense, not how calm Peg is, or how loving she is being, or how hopeful he is starting to get. Because it shouldn’t be like this. It should be the scene he imagined in his head: Peg screaming at him, his own voice rising to be heard over hers. A pillow thrown at him, and then a table knocked over. And then it would be Erin crying in her room and more screaming about family and leaving and who he is going to see. It should be like that; BJ would know how to handle that better. You can meet a scream with a scream, a fight with a fight, but what could you do when all you are given is kindness that you don’t deserve? 

Peg hugs him, her body leaning against his back, curling inward with him. Her forehead rests against the back of his neck, and he wishes this could be enough for him, that he could live forever with Peg and Erin and his perfect American Dream in California. But each day he feels like he is living a lie and each day he feels like he is hurting Peg by staying and each day he feels drawn to leave. And each day it is shame and guilt and love that keeps him here, because he loves Peg, with his whole heart, and he thought that that love was it for him, that it was the best it will get. And for a while it was; for so long he was so happy being in love with her. But then he was drafted; then BJ found _him_ in Korea and nothing made sense anymore. 

And now he is leaving again. Not forced to leave, not this time, not drafted and dragged away from the family he was just starting to get used to having. This time he chooses to leave, and he doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse.

The morning he leaves, Peg is there to send him off, Erin in her arms, still half asleep. The sun is barely over the horizon, and the suitcase in his hand feels heavy, heavier than it should be with only a few days worth of clothes in it. All BJ can think about is that day all those years ago when he was leaving for Korea, suitcase in hand and Peg sending him off, but this time, Peg doesn’t look sad; no tears are in her eyes when she smiles at him and hands Erin off to him. BJ doesn’t know what he’s feeling, but the ground feels steady under his feet for the first time in a long time, and as he says goodbye to his daughter, sticking his face in near hers and speaking softly, he feels that maybe he is making the right choice.

The guilt is overwhelming when Peg hugs him, arms wrapping around his neck in a tight embrace. He shouldn’t be leaving, especially so soon, but he has to. He can’t stay like this, and he thinks Peg can tell, because she isn’t saying anything except wishing him a good time and to call as soon as he can. She doesn’t even kiss him on the lips in goodbye, just on the cheek, and he isn’t sure if she means anything by it, but to him it means the world, like she is telling him it is okay. And it doesn’t remove the guilt, not completely; BJ feels like this guilt will stay with him for the rest of his life, another layer of guilt to what is already there, but it makes it better. He isn’t breaking Peg’s heart; somehow him leaving again isn’t making her ask him to stay, and maybe their relationship was always like this: waiting for the moment to break apart, waiting together in solidarity and love but always knowing the end is inevitable. He doesn’t know what to make of that, what it means, but he is thankful for it anyways, for her steady smile and love that has never wavered for a second.

BJ hands Erin back over to Peg and he smiles. The smile isn’t forced, it’s almost easy to turn his lips up into that grin, and it might just be the best thing in the world to see Peg return the smile, because it feels so _right_ : to be standing here, in the morning light, saying goodbye once again, and smiling. Smiling in symmetry, equal understanding of what is happening, where their relationship is going. Peg might not be the love of his life, but he sure loves her with everything he has. She is still a rock, his anchor, a steady line to ground him to what’s real, what’s important, and he is going to love her for the rest of his days, but not as a wife. 

And maybe that is all he needs to realize for him to be alright with leaving, because he can take that first step away from their house with a feeling of happiness in his heart he thought he would never feel again. And he can walk to the taxi parked in front of their house and look back to his wife and daughter and smile again. He thinks he finally understands what Peg has seemed to know this whole time, silently waiting for him to realize it too: that when he came home from the war, he was not the same man that left, and that is okay.

\---

Standing in front of his house, it doesn’t feel real, like BJ should be waking up any second, like Peg should be shaking his shoulder and placing a kiss on his lips as a morning greeting. He doesn’t know how he managed to come all this way without turning back, because that is all he wants to do now, to leave and forget about this. To go back to Peg and tell her he loves her, that he is sorry he went away, that he is going to stay with her forever. Because that would be easy, so incredibly easy in this moment to convince himself that that life would be enough, and with the fear he feels right now, he might even be able to convince himself that he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life missing him.

BJ takes a breath and walks up the steps of the front porch, each foot landing heavy, his suitcase hitting each stair as he carries it with him. He moves forward despite everything in him telling him not to, and by the time he reaches the top step, all other thoughts fall away and he is left with this feeling near giddiness, his stomach churning and something in his chest pulling tight, making it hard to breath. 

He reaches out and knocks on the door. From inside he hears a voice call out: “In a second!”

BJ takes a step back, the voice sending him reeling. Part of him thought he would never hear that voice again, the inflection, the tone, everything so familiar it makes him want to cry. Because this is what he has been waiting for. This is what he has been thinking about for almost a year. This is what he wants.

The door swings open and there he is, standing not two feet away from him, t-shirt hanging loose off his body and hair hanging almost in his eyes, more grey than the last time BJ saw him. And it takes a moment for BJ to regain the ability to talk, because his mouth has gone dry and the very sight of him has his heart racing faster than he can ever remember and he feels warm despite the cool breeze and all he can think about is that he is here and he is seeing him again and he finally feels something stop hurting that has been hurting since he left Korea.

“Hawk,”

It is the first time he speaks his name since he left him. It is the first time that name comes as a fully formed thought he had seen him get into that chopper. The first time he lets the single word be a whole sentence again, meaning and emotion holding the word as it sits heavy in the air between them. He has so much to say, but he can’t get anything out of his mouth, his head, his heart. The only thing that can come out is his name, the name that has been trapped inside him for so long, finally free; the name like a prayer uttered in devotion, a sacred and holy rapture that is love.

“Hawkeye,” BJ is breathless, and the man in front of him has his mouth open in shock and eyes wide and he is looking at BJ like he is seeing a ghost. And he might very well be, because they should be dead. BJ thinks he should be dead for even coming here, and he knows they both should have died thousands of times before now, but they haven’t and they are here now, together. 

Together.

Hawkeye hugs him first, his arms wrapping around BJ as he lunges forward, the movement quick and awkward and desperate. And BJ hugs him back, because he is hopeless to this. He holds him like his life depends on it, and this feels so much like their last hug together, when they were going home and they couldn’t stop each other from leaving, so they did the next best thing, which was to hug, to latch on, to hold onto a part of the other for dear life and hope it wasn’t the last time.

And it wasn’t, and their embrace now isn’t the last time either. BJ has his hand on the back of Hawkeye’s head, and Hawkeye is pressing his face into his neck and BJ can feel the tears on his skin and it makes him feel alive. 

“You said goodbye,” Hawkeye breaths out the words, sound getting lost against BJ’s skin, his whole body rumbling as he talks. BJ’s arms tighten, his eyes closing and he breathes in. Hawkeye smells like an old sweater and firewood and the ocean, and all the things he wasn’t in Korea: clean and warm and peaceful and home.

BJ needs to answer Hawkeye, because he is still crying against him, and his hands are on his back, holding his shirt with a fury, like if he releases him then this won’t be real. “It was a precaution,” _It was a challenge. It was a confession. It was what you wanted. It was what you needed. It was the only way I could tell you I loved you._

There are thousands of things he could have said, thousands of meanings for that goodbye, but BJ keeps them to himself because right now it all feels too real, too perfect, too much like a dream. And he can’t confess like this. He needs it quiet, needs his heart to calm down and Hawkeye to calm down and for everything to calm down and finally let the two of them have some peace. He cannot say he loves him, not yet. Everything is too fragile still; he doesn’t even know if Hawkeye will have him. 

It has been almost a year since they’ve seen each other, one month from a full year, and the time they have spent apart is gnawing on BJ, because he wants to know everything that has happened to Hawkeye that he missed. All the moments, no matter how trivial they are, because BJ cares, too much to admit it, too much to form words to express the true extent of which he cares. He needs to sit and listen, hear Hawkeye recount the year to him, go through every single day, and BJ will do the same, if Hawkeye wants him too. 

Their relationship is built on that. It is give and take and talk and listen and hurt and comfort and joke and rebuttal and two sides of the same coin, peas in a pod, partners in crime, Pierce and Hunnicutt, Hawkeye and BJ, Hawk and Beej. It is all that and more, all the little things, like the chess they played together, or holding yarn for the other to ball it up, or playing volleyball with that stupid blown up glove and a clothes line with all their socks and shirts strung up along it. It was sitting outside the Swamp just to be together. It was walking around post-op together. It was eating breakfast, lunch, dinner and all the coffee breaks in between together. It was always being together: inseparable, so everyone said.

But they haven’t been together for so long. And BJ is scared, scared they aren’t going to click, scared what they were like before was just a byproduct of the war, that they don’t actually fit so perfectly together, that without the war it is just going to be all bony elbows and mistakes and apologies as they fumble around each other and never find their footing again. BJ is scared, more scared than when he left for Korea, or when he told Peg he needed to go to Maine, because he simply doesn’t know what he would do if he can’t slip in beside Hawkeye like he used to, fit together with him like they were meant to be.

“Beej,” His name is spoken so softly it is almost a sob, the syllable getting lost in the tears, choked out from a tight throat. BJ sinks his head into Hawkeye’s shoulder, because that is all he needs to know that it is going to be okay. They are together again, and that is what matters. They fit together, just like before, like they never left each other.

Hawkeye leads him inside after a while. It could have been minutes or hours, the two of them standing on Hawkeye’s porch wrapped in each other’s arms. Hawkeye leads him in with a hand on his arm, grabbing BJ’s wrist, fingers wrapping around his skin, pulling him forward, kicking the door closed behind them.

His house is small, the definition of cozy, shelves cluttered with knick-knacks and books, walls covered with pictures and postcards and notes. It is exactly what BJ had imagined Hawkeye’s home to be like: a conjunction of love and care boiled down into a home that smells like a fireplace, coats hanging by the door, shoes aligned against the wall. 

BJ doesn’t even notice Hawkeye has stopped dragging him along until his shoe is kicked and he shakes his head to stop himself from thinking about how easy it would be to call this place home. He can’t live here, not in Maine, not yet at least. He needs to be in California, with Peg, with Erin. He needs to remember that.

They’re in the kitchen now. A table is pushed against one wall with an open book placed face down, a mug of something hot sitting beside it. Hawkeye is walking, shifting, pacing, his head moving all around, as if he can’t decide whether to look at BJ or not. BJ understands, because his eyes keep moving too, landing for a second on Hawkeye and then jumping away, scared, unsure, too hopeful. He wants to reach out, to touch Hawkeye again, to remind himself that this is real, but he keeps to himself and gestures to the table instead, hoping he can finally speak without feeling like he will break.

“Can I sit?” The words are heavy and BJ doesn’t understand why. Maybe it’s that he never had to ask that to Hawkeye before, ask permission to share his space, ask to make himself a place in his life. Or maybe it’s that he can’t find a way to get a conversation started and this is the only way he can start to speak: by asking something, anything, any innocent question. Or maybe it’s that this moment still feels too big, like they are stars of a movie and this reunion is the climatic scene, from which all else will resolve, but their acting isn’t up to par and the scene is falling flat and they’re just standing around in a kitchen so BJ needs to say something to get the scene started again.

Hawkeye isn’t aware of what is going on in BJ’s head, but he looks at him in a way that makes BJ want to turn away, and then he nods. “Of course.”

They sit and it’s too much. Their sides are pressed against each other and Hawkeye is resting his foot against BJ’s like it is the most natural thing in the world to be this close once again. It’s intoxicating, having Hawkeye touching him again, everything coming back to him: all the dreams he has woken from with a memory of a hand on his arm, his knee, his face; and all the times they’ve touched in Korea, latching onto each other like a drowning man trying to keep afloat.

And now this: so innocent it is almost nothing, but it feels more than all the moments that happened before. Because it is real, and it is here, in Maine, in Hawkeye’s kitchen.

BJ looks down to where their feet are touching, Hawkeye’s sock resting against the canvas of BJ’s shoe. The sock is blue, and BJ stares at it because he has never seen Hawkeye wear a blue sock before and the fact that he is now seems important, or maybe it’s just a reminder that they aren’t in the army anymore and their socks don’t need to be green. He can't decide which is true, so he just keeps on looking.

Hawkeye pushes against his shoulder, trying to get his attention away from the ground. It should be a playful bump, but BJ leans into it, craving how solid Hawkeye feels against him. BJ blinks and looks up, his eyes meeting Hawkeye’s for just a moment before it becomes unbearable and he has to look away. He wishes this was easier

It’s silent for a few moments. There is a soft tick of a clock coming from somewhere in the house and Hawkeye keeps moving his hands from the book to the mug to just having them splayed out on the table. BJ watches them, their movements nervous and fast and BJ curls his hands into fists to stop himself from reaching out and grabbing them.

He wants to say something, to keep the conversation going, but nothing is coming to mind. Well, one thing is coming to mind, but BJ still can’t form his mouth around the words and the timing isn’t right. He is starting to think the timing might never be right, but he still can’t say it.

It’s so hard to sit there, to just be here and let themselves sit in silence. BJ wants to do something, say anything, to just reach out and touch Hawkeye, to take his hand and hold it and tell him he’s never leaving him again. But that’s a lie, because he has to leave in a few days. He has a job and he has a house and he has a wife, and they are all in California. Try as he might to let himself think he can live here with Hawkeye in this quiet little town in this quiet little house, he can’t.

“Why’d you come? Why now?” Hawkeye finally asks. He is looking at BJ but BJ isn’t looking back and he needs to close his eyes for a moment.

He remembers Peg asking him almost the exact same questions, her eyes curious and a small smile making her face look delicate as she asked about the letter. And in this memory BJ can see the threads of their marriage already breaking, the ties that bind the two of them together snapping under the weight of the questions. He had told her it was because he had missed Hawkeye, and it wasn’t the whole truth, but Peg let it be the whole truth in that moment, not questioning any further, letting him keep the answer to himself. 

She did that because she loves him, and he kept the truth hidden because he loves her, and then she let him go because of that same love, and as he left, she had smiled at him with that same love, and when he had called her in the airport after his flight had landed in Maine, she had wished him luck with that same love. BJ is still trying to understand how the love Peg had always shown him is the same love that let him leave her again, and maybe it means their love had never been the love he had thought it was, that it wasn’t the end all romantic love like you read about in stories.

BJ forces himself to stop thinking of Peg. It doesn’t work, not entirely, but he finds his throat is clear and a sentence can form in his mind, so he answers.

“I missed you,”

It is the same answer he had given Peg, and it doesn’t feel any better saying it now. It’s still a lie, still just the barest edge of the truth, and BJ feels sick, like if he tells one more lie he is going to explode. He wants to leave it at that, to just let the safe answer be true for now, but Hawkeye deserves more, deserves all he can give him, and BJ needs to give him more, give a better answer than just what is safe. 

He has gone his whole life lying: to himself, to his family, to his friends, to Hawkeye, and he has to stop himself. He has to be done, because if he doesn’t stop now, he might let himself lie forever. He needs the truth, the actual, full, uninhibited truth, because he is so close to letting himself accept what he wants, to finally accept that what he has is not what he wants, but he needs the truth to do that, needs to say the truth and be told the truth.

It takes every ounce of strength BJ has to open his mouth again, to give Hawkeye the truth. “I couldn’t stand not seeing you.”

And he thinks this might be a worse betrayal to Peg than if he just kissed Hawkeye, because what he is saying, underneath the aching confession of want he just admitted, he is saying that he couldn’t stand seeing Peg. 

Maybe the truth does hurt, and maybe it is supposed to hurt, because BJ feels like he has just gotten shot, his heart tight and beating fast and a pain is growing inside him, spreading to every corner of his being. He cannot shake the feeling that he is betraying Peg, and every nerve in him is screaming to just stand up and leave, go back home and never think about Hawkeye again. 

It is taking everything in him to stay seated, and his words are ringing in his ears and he hates himself for them, because he shouldn’t feel this way. He should be content with the life he has, with his perfect wife and perfect daughter and perfect house and perfect job. He has everything, and yet all he wants is to be here, beside this man who has nothing that America has advertised is necessary for a happy life: no wife, no child, no life in the suburbs. And despite all that, BJ feels happy, so goddamn happy he hates himself for it.

Hawkeye shifts and for a second BJ thinks he is about to stand up. He almost starts to apologize, let his words flow out of his mouth and apologize for everything he has said or done or for everything he hasn’t said or hasn’t done, anything to just keep Hawkeye beside him. But then Hawkeye simply crosses one leg over the other and then he settles back in his seat again, and everything BJ was going to say dies on his tongue.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” Hawkeye has his hands on the mug in front of him, the liquid inside long since gone cold. His fingers are falling silently against the side of the ceramic in an endless rhythm and everything just seems so normal. The words are spoken without any special care, like they were talking about the weather, nuance gone from the words, only based desire boiled down into syllables.

It should be different, words like that shouldn’t be spoken as if they aren’t a confession of the worst kind, baring the soul in a way they’ve never done before. BJ thinks they should be whispering, speaking in hushed silence as the world beats down around them. But maybe that’s what sets them apart: in moments like these BJ always wants to stop, to push aside what is happening, words whispered because if spoken any louder then they would become real. But Hawkeye was never like that, at least around him. He was able to say these things, when it mattered he was able to tell him how he felt. He was able to say goodbye, and all BJ could do was write it in rocks, a whisper of a goodbye, communicated in the only way he could. 

Hawkeye had been able to speak it then, and now he is able to speak without lowering his voice, the words real and raw and they hurt, like someone is pulling his heart out of his chest. But BJ still can’t say anything back, his voice cut off by his own desires. He has gone so long denying himself everything, how can he just flip a switch and be okay? Every second he stays seated is a testament to his strength, to stay here and confront this.

He wants himself to be okay with this. He wants to be able to look at Hawkeye and tell him all that he has been thinking since he got home, since they left each other, since they met. He has been in love with him since Korea, but he couldn’t accept it then. He couldn’t grapple with this love and the guilt ate away at him, guilt that killed his soul for even thinking about it. He had needed to keep his mind on Peg, on Erin, on the life he had back in California, because if he didn’t have that, didn’t have something waiting for him to come home to, then he had nothing. He would have been lost in the midst of war.

But then he had come home alive, and he had come home without him, and for a whole year he tried to shake this love, forget that he loved someone else. With every kiss he gave Peg, every hug, every smile, he tried to force himself to feel that love again, the love he had left California with, the love he thought had for Peg. But the love wasn’t there; every time he kissed her, it felt empty, a lie, a simple performance with no heart behind it. He had lost that love in Korea, but maybe it’s more like someone took that love in Korea, took it and didn’t give it back. But BJ didn’t even ask for it back, and that is so much worse.

And now the person who took that love, who BJ gave that love to willingly, is sitting beside him, letting the truth lay between them for the first time. BJ wishes he was a better person; it would all be so much easier if BJ was better. A better man, a better husband, a better friend. He would say something back, tell Hawkeye the truth, how he all he wants is a life with him. A proper, non-war life. With mornings waking up side by side, and with breakfasts they make together, a life with quiet evenings, or even loud ones, all that matters is that they’re together for it. He wants to tell him how he wants to put his arm around Hawkeye as he falls asleep and feel his head on his shoulder when he wakes up in the mornings. He wants the life he never thought he could have, never even dreamed about until he had met Hawkeye and everything began to fall apart.

“I’m sorry it took so long,” BJ can’t say how he finds the words, but they come out and he closes his eyes for a moment. He squeezes them shut, keeping himself in darkness, thinking maybe it won't be real when he opens his eyes, that he would be back safely in California and the past 3 years haven’t happened. But he opens his eyes and he’s still in Maine, still in Hawkeye’s kitchen, and the feeling that washes over him is relief. “I— I wanted to come sooner,”

He couldn’t come sooner. First it was getting home, finally seeing Peg and Erin after two years. He couldn’t leave, not then, not so soon after he arrived. And then it was getting settled again, learning how to live his life without the war, remembering what it is like to wake up in a bed that didn’t feel like a sheet of wood, remembering how to walk out of his house and not be worried about shelling, remembering how to eat food and actually want to taste it. And then after that, after he had got settled, after he had started getting used to being home again, seeing Peg’s face every day, being able to give Erin all the kisses he missed out on. After all that, it was the shame that kept him away, and the guilt that stopped him. 

When he started feeling the absence of Hawkeye, when the never ending ache to see him again started to set in, shame came with it, mixing with his guilt, the feeling of the two making him sick, making him hate himself. Time and time again he tried to stop it, forget how much he missed him, but then he would look over, his head moving involuntarily to the space beside him, expecting to be met with Hawkeye’s smile in return, but the space was always empty. He was being haunted by the ghost of a man not yet dead, his presence always expected, yet never there.

He couldn’t make himself leave Peg, but the worst of it all is that he couldn’t make himself stay. And somehow, he has made it back to Hawkeye, making true on his promise that he would see him again, but all those months apart still sit heavy between them, like a physical force pushing them apart no matter how close they sit. And BJ is standing on that precipice now, seeing the gaping canyon between them, and all he has to do is jump, take one step forward and let himself span this unbridgeable distance.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner. I’m sorry—” BJ stops himself, knowing that he would just go on apologizing all night if he let himself. He keeps his eyes on the table; if he looks at Hawkeye right now, he wouldn’t be able to go on. He takes a breath, steadying himself. “I thought about you every single day since I’ve been home. It’s almost obsessive, seeing you every time I close my eyes, my thoughts always drifting to you, my dreams always being about you. But I couldn’t leave Peg, or Erin. I was away for two years and I missed so much, and I thought that maybe this emptiness inside me was because I wasn’t used to being home, not because I… not because I was missing you.”

BJ swallows the sensation to stop talking. He has finally started, and he thinks if he stops now, then he won't ever be able to tell Hawkeye what he wants to tell him. 

"I thought it would get better. Or, I don't know, easier as time went on. That the pain wouldn't feel so fresh. But it never went away. It never quieted. I just kept on missing you and I just kept on hurting." The house is silent around them, and BJ isn't sure Hawkeye is breathing, and he feels like he's holding his own breath, trying to choke himself off before he can finish. But BJ takes a breath. He needs to finish this. "I came here because I can't live without you."

BJ doesn’t feel lighter, like a great weight has been lifted off his shoulders; how so many writers have led him to believe a confession like this would make him feel light. He feels awful, the guilt inside him making him regret every word he has uttered. And he feels vulnerable, like he's waiting for Hawkeye to stab him, or maybe the roof to crash in, or anything that would remind him once and for all he can't be happy, he can't have this. But nothing happens, no disaster is imminent, and he is still alive, heart still beating. He doesn't feel lighter, but he can take a deep breath now, and he feels one step closer to letting himself have what he wants, so maybe he doesn't need to feel lighter, he just needs to feel better.

"You can't live without me?" Hawkeye's voice is small, scared, and it startles BJ because he doesn't think he has ever heard Hawkeye sound this scared. He has seen Hawkeye on the brink of death, fighting death, being surrounded by death, but he has never sounded as scared as he does now. BJ wants to reach out, to touch him, to reassure him, but his arms won't move, so he just has to sit there and listen to Hawkeye sound so goddamn scared beside him. 

"From the moment I met you," The truth feels good to say. So long he has lied to himself, tried to ignore everything he was feeling, certain the truth was worse than any lie he could tell himself. But he was wrong, he was so wrong, because saying the truth, finally telling Hawkeye just how much he means to him, just how much he has changed him, affected him, altered his world: it feels like heaven. "From the moment I met you, I knew I couldn't be without you."

He knows he should be looking at Hawkeye right now, letting his eyes show the depth of emotion behind his words, but BJ isn't ready for that. It is so much easier to not look at him; he has already gone so long without actually looking at him. For years he has always forced himself to look away, to not watch Hawkeye how he wanted to, to not let his eyes linger on his hair, his eyes, his legs, his hands. BJ has spent so long not looking at him, so to sit here with his eyes on the table is the easiest thing in the goddamn world. 

Hawkeye would be looking at him if their roles were reversed; Hawkeye _is_ looking at him. Hawkeye has looked at him from the moment they met. Well, not the moment, not when he shook his hand without care as Radar first introduced him. But ever since “Rudyard Kipling" and Hawkeye finally looked at him for the first time, his whole face lit up in surprise, finally taking notice of the man behind him. Ever since that moment, Hawkeye has always looked at him, and it is like the sun is looking at him, making him feel hot, burning, bright, and he never wanted that feeling to go away.

He feels it now, that hot, burning sensation that always overcomes him when Hawkeye looks at him. It is prickling at the back of his neck, the skin going warm, slowly spreading down his spine. And BJ thinks if this is what it feels like when he isn't looking, what would it be like when he finally looks. What would it feel like when he finally finds the courage to look at Hawkeye and have Hawkeye look back at him? 

BJ closes his eyes instead. He never said he was brave. "It has taken me too long to get here, and I hope, some day, you can forgive me for it. But I want to stick around. I want to be in your life again."

The hand on his shoulder makes him jump, eyes flying open, body leaning almost out of his chair. Hawkeye has his hand hovering in the air where his shoulder once was and a look on his face like he has just killed a dog, and then BJ is relaxing back to where he was, trying to act like he didn't just fall out of his chair because someone touched him, because _Hawkeye_ touched him. His eyes go back to the safety of the table for a second, but then he turns his head to look at Hawkeye, who is still looking at him like he has just committed a horrible crime. BJ knows the feeling.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to react like that." BJ can't seem to find a smile, so he settles with a tired frown. It seems to do the trick for Hawkeye, because his expression has changed to something clouded and he blinks a few times before he talks.

"I understand,"

The sentence feels incomplete, like Hawkeye has more to tell him, to further explain why he understands. But they both know why, they both know why BJ almost jumped out of his seat from a single, unexpected touch. They both know why Hawkeye's first reaction to that was one of horrified guilt, and they both know why Hawkeye leaves his sentence unfinished.

Sometimes BJ feels like he will never be able to get over the war, like it will haunt him until his dying day. And maybe, he thinks, that it should. Because wars shouldn’t be forgotten, shouldn’t be written out of history, and they shouldn't be just a story to tell your children. Maybe he deserves to be haunted by the war, haunted by a war he never wanted to be in but was forced to act in. A war that left a country torn in two, both sides destroyed by the pointless conflict. He can see the war already starting to fade from the memory of the public, the people he passes on the street never once thinking about a country that was once called Korea and now called North and South. The war is starting to be forgotten already, so maybe it is best if he remembers it, like if he is haunted by it then maybe it meant something, that all that death won't be forgotten, that the suffering wasn’t felt for nothing.

He sees the same haunted look in Hawkeye's eyes, and he knows that the war has latched onto Hawkeye and will never let go. Hawkeye will try to move on from the war, just as they all try to, maybe even come close to becoming well adjusted in his post-Korea life, but the war will still be there, a shadow over each of his actions, a haze in his eyes when he sees the color green, or hears a noise outside that is just a little too loud. What makes it worse, what makes it almost unbearable to think about, is that he knows Hawkeye is affected more by it. If the war is a ghost to BJ, a small thing that rattles doors and walk through hallways, then the war to Hawkeye is a poltergeist, ruining the house it haunts with its rage, overwhelming everything that crosses its path.

They are both helpless to these ghosts, this haunting that has come into their lives, but they're both still living, and they both are still trying to not let this ghost take over, so maybe that's all they can do. Maybe that's all anyone can do about the past.

Hawkeye's hand is slowly lowering from its position just above BJ's shoulder, and it eventually comes to rest on the table once more. BJ watches it until he looks up at Hawkeye and something forces him to change the subject. Hawkeye's eyes have a far away look in them, one that makes BJ worried, so he turns to a topic that is easier to talk about.

"Tell me," BJ wishes his voice sounded confident, but he knows it is shaky, adrenaline still rushing through him from being touched. But his words make Hawkeye blink again and that look is gone from his eyes and BJ can let out a breath. "What have you been doing the past year?"

They talk for hours on end, the sun setting fast outside even though it is summer. BJ had always felt the days lasted forever in the summer, the light lasting hours even after the sun sinks below the horizon, light lingering in the pure, childhood feeling of summer. There is a window open in the kitchen, and the sound of birds change into the sound of cicadas and then crickets and BJ thinks he can hear the sound of water from outside in the quiet moments between sentences. 

Hawkeye talks without stopping, his words rolling on and on, and BJ wouldn’t stop them for anything. He recounts all the patients he has seen in Crabapple Cove, even visiting the neighboring small towns as the months have passed and performing a check up stopped making him feel like he was a glass ball about to be dropped. And BJ understands what he is saying, because he felt the same way. When he got home, he didn't go back to work for two months. Even thinking about surgery, about blood, about cutting someone open, caused his breathing to stop. And when he finally got back to work, he was assigned the simple tasks, the patients who weren't on the brink of death, and each day it felt like a dream. Walking through the hallways of the hospital, sitting in rooms conducting routine tests, every second BJ was prepared for it to all fall away, a tension always gripping his body, waiting for something to go drastically wrong, or for him to break, to finally have the sight of blood turn the last screw loose and cause him to start screaming and never stop.

Hawkeye tells him about his dad, how he lives down the road, how he lived with him for a while after the war, sleeping in his childhood bedroom, spending days fishing with his dad. And when he invites BJ to meet him tomorrow, BJ agrees, of course he agrees, and he thinks he might be agreeing to something more than just being introduced to a family member, like he is promising to be here tomorrow, to stick around for a while, to be a part of Hawkeye’s life again. And BJ agrees to all of it: the meeting of his dad, the being here tomorrow, the sticking around, because it's all BJ wants, has wanted for so long, even longer than he can let himself admit. He wants to be a part of Hawkeye's life, to be a part of his routine, to meet the people he knows and understand the life he lives when it isn't in a war zone. 

He wants to know what shampoo he uses, wants to know how he makes his eggs in the morning, how he folds his clothes. He wants to know everything about him, and BJ feels like it might be too much, that maybe Hawkeye doesn’t want that too, but then Hawkeye asks about California so earnestly BJ wants to cry.

When he asks, he is sitting with an arm across the back of BJ’s chair. BJ can feel his hand skimming the skin of his arm and his mind is so focused on that almost point of contact, he nearly misses the question. Hawkeye is looking at him with a stare so intense if it was from anyone else BJ would be turning away, but this stare is drawing him in, making him want to be watched like this every day for the rest of his life. And he has a smile on his face, so casual and familiar, a smile that was always saved just for BJ in the quiet moments of war. BJ thinks he could stay in this moment forever, all else falling away until his world is just him and Hawkeye and the peace that is finally around them.

So BJ tells him about California, about his job, about Erin, about the sunrise and the sunset, about his house. And then he tells him about Peg, and when he mentions her name, Hawkeye shifts, eyes dropping only for a second, but when they look back at him, some of the light in them is gone, and that stops BJ, his words faltering. Because he should be the one losing his footing about Peg. Her name should stop him in his tracks, not Hawkeye.

“She doesn’t know how much I—” BJ cuts himself off before he can say love, because it doesn't feel right, to say it now. To say it in the same sentence he is talking about his wife; like it would be sacrilege to Peg, or to Hawkeye, or even to himself. When he talks again, his voice is quieter, unable to bring himself to say it louder. “She didn’t even ask why I needed to come here.”

They move on after that, the conversation switching as Hawkeye offers him something to eat. BJ adjusts quickly, familiar with the way their conversations sometimes go, abruptly switching to another topic when one train of thought becomes a little too unbearable. And maybe this is how they ended up here, something unspoken still between them. Maybe if they were better at talking, maybe if they hadn’t spent years lying to each other, years letting them be lied at. Maybe if one of them could just say it, say the words BJ has been feeling for years, maybe then it would be different. Maybe then they could continue talking about Peg without feeling like the ground is going to fall away beneath them. 

And maybe then BJ could do more than watch Hawkeye stand at his stove as he stirs a pot. Maybe if they had just spoken a little more, a little longer, then he could feel like he could do something besides just sit there. It’s not helplessness that he feels, but more like he is slowly drowning and the only thing that could save him would be Hawkeye, his hand in his, his eyes on him. 

They eat. It’s a soup BJ didn’t get the name of, but it feels like love, and then Hawkeye takes him on a tour of his house, moving from room to room, pointing at each notable thing. In the living room it is a ceramic sculpture of a fish head, an ugly creature his father had given him when he was twenty and he had kept it ever since. In the hallway it is a picture on the wall. Three people stand in the image, their black and white bodies turned hazy with time. Hawkeye tells him that it is his family, his mom and dad and him, and BJ stares at it even after Hawkeye starts walking upstairs. In the bathroom it is the shower curtain, an ugly yellow thing. There is no story behind it, but Hawkeye points it out just the same, like he wants to share all the details of his life with him, no matter how boring.

The bedroom is last and BJ almost loses his nerve, hesitating at the doorway, like this is the last line he cannot cross. But then Hawkeye looks back at him with a smile and BJ understands he never really had a choice to not go in, because he is always going to follow Hawkeye, always be one step behind him, or just to his right. He’s hopeless to it, to the pull Hawkeye has on him, always drawing him towards him. So he steps in, crosses the threshold, and nothing changes. Hawkeye is pointing to his bed and reciting the exact day he bought the blanket that is laying on top it and BJ smiles because everything feels good, like he’s meant to be here, listening to Hawkeye ramble on about a shop an hour away that has the best knitwear on the east coast.

Somehow, BJ isn’t too sure at this point, they end up laying down on Hawkeye’s bed, and they are just laying there like they’ve done it a thousand times before, Hawkeye with his eyes closed and BJ staring up at the ceiling trying to sort out his thoughts. And he shouldn’t be feeling like this, so comfortable with himself, with where he is and what he is feeling, but maybe he should be at this point, finally accept what he has been avoiding. That maybe it’s okay to be feeling like this, that he isn’t tearing his life apart by being happy, that he deserves to be here, to be with Hawkeye.

BJ lets out a breath, long and slow. It’s a long time coming, letting himself feel okay. And if he has to shut out a part of his mind that is still screaming at him to leave, then he will. Because he feels okay, just lying here, and he starts to let his imagination run off, thinking of the future, not afraid anymore, and before he knows it, he is talking.

"There is an opening at a hospital in San Francisco."

There is a second of silence, two, three, and BJ thinks he might have ruined it, whatever quiet understanding that has formed between them. But then he hears Hawkeye let out a breath. "We could open our own practice instead." His eyes are still closed and his hand is still beside BJ's, laying on the mattress between them, skin just brushing against his.

BJ doesn't know if this is a joke because they've joked about this hundreds of times before, about working together, about living together, about having a life together after the war. But all those times felt like jokes, BJ knew what they were saying was just a dream, just something to pass the time, any way to get their minds away from their current situation. 

This time it feels real, like BJ could reach out and touch this future they are imagining, like it could happen. And that scares him, because this feels so right, so peaceful, just laying here beside Hawkeye, talking like this again. He could live like this forever, and this future they are talking about feels as real as the moment they are in, like BJ will close his eyes and when he opens them again, they will be in California, just as they imagined. 

The worst part is that BJ wants it, wants it more than anything, to just live with Hawkeye, have him in his life again, have a future with him. But BJ is starting to think that that isn’t the worst part; maybe it is the best part, to want something so much, to have so much to live for. Maybe his fear is unfounded, and maybe his worry is misplaced, because he wants it, and with each word Hawkeye says, he thinks that maybe he might just get it. 

He doesn't know if he is just tired from flying across the country, or still in a haze of euphoria from seeing him again, but BJ lets himself say what he wants, the words coming so easy now. "Peg can sell us our house."

Hawkeye moves at this, shifting away and BJ feels his stomach drop, because why would he say something like that? Maybe this is self sabotage, never letting himself get what he wants, always choosing the option to fuck it up before he can get there. And BJ starts to say something, like _I'm sorry, that was stupid, you dont need to respond_ , but then he looks over at Hawkeye and find his eyes on him. There is a smile on his face, one so serene and peaceful and BJ realizes that he has seen this smile on Hawkeye's face so many times before, always directed at him. 

"Our house?" The words are followed by his eyebrows raising, amusement coming over his features. "At least buy me a drink first?"

"I have."

The two words are painfully honest and Hawkeye looks back to the ceiling quickly. BJ can see his face contorting into a new emotion, landing on one, and then changing into another, like he’s not sure how to react. He watches for a moment, not letting himself think about what he is saying, what he is meaning with his words. Or maybe he does, maybe he already knows what he is saying, maybe this all has been leading here.

“Come to California.” 

Hawkeye's eyes are on him in an instant, wide and scared and hopeful, oh so hopeful. 

“I’m not joking, Hawk.” BJ closes his eyes because the way Hawkeye is still looking at him, it makes him feel like he’s on fire. “I can’t leave California. Erin— I can’t leave Erin. But I want you there with me. God, I think I need you there.”

When he opens his eyes, Hawkeye hasn’t said anything, but he hasn’t moved either. And his eyes are still on him, and he’s looking at him with something that BJ can’t help but think is love. BJ feels raw, the truth still uneasy in his mouth, but he looks back at Hawkeye and hopes the other man can tell how desperately he is trying to communicate this want, how the words he knows he should speak still fall short, so all he can do is say what he wants, what he needs, and hope it is enough.

And it is enough, because Hawkeye leans forward, so slowly, giving BJ every chance to pull away, like this isn’t what BJ has wanted for years. And BJ doesn’t move except to close his eyes and Hawkeye kisses him.

Hawkeye kisses him and it is warm and peaceful and everything BJ thought it would be and nothing like he thought it would be. It’s confusing, but it’s not, it’s strange, but it’s not, it’s a paradox of feelings, conflicting and contradicting each other every moment. And through all this, all the emotions and sensations BJ is trying to wrap his head around, trying to remember forever how it feels to kiss him, through this all, one feelings stands out bright and clear: that this is always what he was meant to do, like he was put on earth for the sole purpose of kissing Hawkeye, and being kissed by him. 

His lips are warm against his and his hands are soft where they are pressing against his cheek, and somewhere along the way BJ moved his hands so now one is resting in Hawkeye’s hair and the other on his waist. It’s all consuming, this kiss, this love, hitting deep into his soul, drawing out every desire he thought he could never have. For a moment, for one frightening second, BJ thinks he’s going to choke on the immensity of his feelings. They’re pressing against every inch of him, wanting to be spoken, wanting to be acted upon, wanting to devour and consume all they can. It’s overwhelming in a sense BJ has never felt before, like a storm crashing in, drowning everything in its downpour, shaking the ground below with its thunder. He feels like he might die in this storm, choked by all he has.

The feeling is gone almost at once, as Hawkeye’s hand moves to his neck, the touch pulling something deep inside him. And now, feeling the passion Hawkeye is kissing him with, eager and fervently trying to map every inch of his lips with his own, the fear that was overwhelming a moment ago seems foolish, because feeling him, touching him, loving him: there is no fear in that. He feels something dislodge in his chest and let the love pull him in.

Before BJ knows it, soon, too soon after the kiss began, Hawkeye is smiling too much to keep kissing, so he pulls away, just enough to rest his forehead against BJ’s, and they breathe out together, one long exhale, like they have come home after a long day, and the fear that BJ once thought would define his life isn’t there. The only thing BJ can feel now is the tender ache of love echoing in his chest with every beat of his heart, and the grounding touch of Hawkeye’s hand on his neck.


	2. Chapter 2

The next day, they visit Hawkeye’s dad, walking there in the summer heat. Along the way, Hawkeye points out every house they pass, telling him who lives there, how long they’ve been living there, when he’s seen them last. By the time they arrive, BJ knows the complete history of the street. Before Hawkeye can tell him anything about the house they’re standing in front of, the door opens and Daniel Pierce steps out onto the porch, looking down at his son with a begrudging love only a father could have.

“Ben, I heard you coming when you were three houses away,” Daniel says, answering the unasked question that sat on Hawkeye’s face. “Voices carry, yours especially.”

BJ laughs, and laughs again as Hawkeye sends him as much of a glare he can muster, the effect of it worn away by the smile he has plastered on his face. BJ laughs a third time as Hawkeye jumps into action, as if suddenly realizing introductions are needed. He grabs BJ’s arm and pulls him up the porch steps.

“Dad, this is BJ.” Hawkeye stops them in front of Daniel, his eyes flying between his dad and BJ beside him. “BJ, my dad: Daniel Pierce.”

“So this is the famous BJ I’ve heard so much about,” Daniel has a light in his eyes as he shakes BJ’s hand. “I didn’t know you were coming, BJ. I would have thought my son would have been yapping my ear off about a visit from you, but he hadn’t said a word.”

“Well,” BJ laughs, the sound nervous, realizing just what he did to get here. He showed up at Hawkeye’s doorstep, without warning, without a letter, without even a phone call. He put blind trust in things working out: that Hawkeye was home, that he was alone, that he would even allow BJ to come inside. BJ couldn’t consider what would have happened if it didn’t work out, if he knocked and no one answered, if he knocked and someone else answered. “He didn’t know I was coming either.”

BJ looks over to Hawkeye, suddenly aware of how it all sounds, the unspoken reason why he came hiding there among the words. But Hawkeye doesn't look worried, doesn’t even look fazed as he smiles and jostles BJ’s shoulder. “The best surprise I have gotten in years.”

Maybe that shouldn’t send BJ’s heart racing; maybe that shouldn’t make him feel like a lovesick teenager, but he can’t help but to smile and shake his head like that isn’t true, self conscious of how he affects Hawkeye. He feels Daniel’s eyes on both of them, slowly going from one to the next, as if taking in all he can see, processing what is happening before him. For a moment, BJ is worried, worried Daniel will say something, or worse, turn away, assuming the truth, and he is worried for Hawkeye more than himself, worried about what that would do to Hawkeye, to have his dad turn him away because of  _ him _ . But then Hawkeye is smiling at him, face turned towards BJ like he’s the only thing that anyone should be looking at, and BJ can see Daniel’s smile grow fonder, and all the worry inside BJ ceases.

Daniel leads them inside, taking them through the front room and into the kitchen. The house is small, old, the furniture mismatched and used, a solid sense of home permeating the air. BJ can’t help but smile, noticing the height marks on the doorway into the kitchen, each mark cataloging Hawkeye’s height from age 3 to 18. Maybe it’s sentimentality, maybe it’s that BJ never felt a connection to his childhood home, or maybe it’s that Hawkeye looks like he’s going to burst from either nervousness or excitement, whichever runs over first, but BJ settles into a chair at the kitchen table with a feeling of warmth spreading through him, trying not to let the fact that he is in Hawkeye’s childhood home consume him, drown him in the knowledge of all the years they lived and never knew the other existed. It’s a tragedy, to have only known Hawkeye for such a short amount of time, to have met him where he did, when he did, and not somewhere else, anywhere else, anywhere where death wasn’t a shadow over all of them and blood was the most common sight. 

BJ shakes off that thought, no point in dwelling on it, letting it pull him inside his mind until he can’t find his way back out and he’d be destined to think about the  _ what ifs _ till the end of time. It helps that Hawkeye sinks into the chair beside him, helps to see him and remember that no matter where they met, how they met, it lead them here, together, both safe now that the world has stopped ending. 

“So BJ,” Daniel starts, his voice confident, loud in the quietness of the house. “How long are you visiting for?”

Somewhere along the way, BJ has forgotten to think about that aspect of his trip. He packed clothes, enough for two weeks, but he never really thought about the end of this visit. The beginning was all that mattered, was all that he could think about: getting here. Leaving his home, getting on a plane, leaving California. Nothing mattered until he had gotten to Maine, and then the only thing was to see Hawkeye, to finally see him and have him forgive him for being away for so long. The end didn’t cross his mind; the end was as far away as California, a mythical place at this distance.

But now the problem has been placed before him, and BJ doesn’t know the answer. He still can’t think too hard about it, about going home, about leaving Hawkeye, about going back to Peg and Erin and all that happens after. Worse still, he doesn’t know how long Hawkeye wants him around. Even after everything, BJ still can’t shake the feeling of being unwanted, of being easily replaceable, of Hawkeye only wanting him here when it’s convenient or when he’s needed. 

“I… I’m not sure,” BJ turns to look at Hawkeye, hoping he can find an answer in his face. But the way Hawkeye is looking at him, it’s like he’s awaiting an answer too, offering no help to what it should be. BJ smiles, trying to force the sudden nausea in his stomach to leave. “I guess as long as Hawkeye will have me.”

In a different context, in a different setting, with a different audience, those words could almost be vows. And really, maybe, they are still vows, even here, in Hawkeye’s childhood home, his father as witness, or maybe they have always been vows that BJ has silently spoken since he met Hawkeye. They’re true; they’re at the core of this all, because it has long been the truth for BJ that he will stay with Hawkeye as long as he can, as long as Hawkeye will let him be by his side. Not just this visit, because they both know he needs to leave eventually, but for all of it, from the very moment he met him, from even before he started to love him, from before he accepted that love. This has been BJ’s promise, silently kept for years, and now, here, of all places, he finally speaks them to Hawkeye.

The meaning doesn’t pass Hawkeye by. He blinks, for a second speechless, eyes dancing to every corner of BJ’s face. And then he smiles, the tenderness growing slowly until BJ thinks he might cry just by the way Hawkeye is looking at him. “You can stay as long as you want.” The word forever is unsaid, left unspoken in the silence following the words, but it burrows into BJ’s chest regardless, the sensation of being wanted, of being told he is wanted, of his confession being accepted and given back to him with equal care.

And then BJ remembers Daniel, the patient father of Hawkeye sitting across from them with a look of unending affection. “Before you leave, I’ll have you boys over for dinner. I would tonight, but—”

“It’s poker night at Mrs. Carnegie’s tonight,” Hawkeye cuts in, leaning his forearms against the table. “Oh! Hey, Hey--” Hawkeye slaps the table, as a thought comes to his mind. “See if you can get the fifteen dollars Susan still owes me!”

They talk for an hour, maybe two, BJ stops keeping track by the time Daniel begins telling stories from Hawkeye’s childhood. Hawkeye complains at first, loudly proclaiming that no one wants to hear them, but he doesn’t try very hard to stop his dad from telling them, instead settling back in his chair and looking between BJ and his dad with a warm smile on his face. And it’s easy, talking with Daniel, listening to his stories, told in the same manner as Hawkeye’s always were: like what was going to happen next is the most interesting thing he will ever say. Each time BJ speaks, he can feel Hawkeye’s eyes on him and knows there is a smile on his face, can picture it without even looking, a smile like hearing BJ talk with his dad is the best thing he could ever witness.

Then, eventually, some time later, Daniel excuses himself, telling them he needs to go check something upstairs, leaving BJ and Hawkeye sitting in the kitchen. It’s quiet for a moment, still, no movement from them, only the tired creaks of the house as Daniel walks through it, until Hawkeye speaks, the words coming out soft, quiet, keeping his eyes on the table in front of them. "I love you, too, you know." 

Maybe it's the fact that he already kissed him that the words don't knock BJ over, or maybe it's the fact that Daniel has just left the room and he is more worried about someone overhearing them say those words than to actually react to what Hawkeye is saying. And BJ finds his eyes going to the doorway Daniel had just walked through, waiting at any moment for him to come back and the world to end.

But Hawkeye speaks again, looking at him now. "Don't worry about my dad. He's fine. He knows," BJ finally let's himself look away from the doorway and Hawkeye is still looking at him with a smile that fills his whole face and BJ can’t help but smile back. BJ always thought a confession like this would be done in tears, equal parts despair and misery accompany the words, but with the smiles now, with sadness millions of miles away, BJ can’t understand how this could be said with anything but a smile. "I love you, Beej. I didn't get to say it before. You really didn't say it either, but I understood what you meant, saying how much you missed me and all that. I love you."

And now the words do hit BJ, taking the air out of his lungs, and he feels like he is going to drown, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to drown in this feeling. Because it's overwhelming to hear Hawkeye say those words, and yet he isn't afraid, he isn't worried. So often in his life he has felt like he was dying when things like this happen, when emotions come into play, when love and longing and desires are voiced. But he doesn't feel like he is dying now; he feels like he has just started to live.

"I love you," BJ let's the words come out lightly, suddenly out of breath. And maybe he should have said those words hours ago, months ago, years ago, but it doesn't matter now because he is finally saying them and he can say them with a smile because he is feeling a lot of things in this moment, but more than anything— more than his fear, his guilt, his shame— he is happy. Happy in a way he's never been, with a tightness in his chest not from pain but from love, and a feeling of peace seeping into every fiber of his being. Hawkeye looks at him with all the love in the world and all BJ can do is sit there and let him, but this time it isn’t so bad, to just sit and be helpless to this love.

"I love you, Hawk." He says it again just because he can, just because nothing is stopping him from saying it. And Hawkeye reaches out and takes his hand and BJ thinks he will never stop saying it.

They end up visiting Charles the next day. It’s not planned, not really, they just ended up there. 

Ever since they left his father’s house, Hawkeye had been incessantly talking about a restaurant in Boston, describing a soup that BJ doubts is as good as Hawkeye claims, but BJ suggests they just take a drive down to Boston to eat there because BJ never been and there’s no reason not to. So they go, climb into Hawkeye’s car to drive the few hours down the coast to have dinner in a restaurant BJ has never heard of. In the car, halfway to the city, Hawkeye gets a smile on his face like he has just come up with a devious scheme and all BJ can think as he stares at his face from the passenger seat is that he missed this.

"Let's visit Charles," Hawkeye keeps his eyes on the road but his smile grows wider.

"Charles? You want to visit Charles?" BJ asks because this was the last thing he had been expecting to come out of Hawkeye's mouth. He was expecting more soup talk, or another thing about the city that Hawkeye just had to show him, not Charles, a man BJ barely thought about since he came home. "We're talking about the same Charles, right? The arrogant snob we used to live with. That Charles?"

"Uh huh," Hawkeye just nods. "I have his address. Margaret gave it to me."

"Margaret?" This stops BJ in his tracks. He didn't know Hawkeye had seen anyone since he came home, but it makes sense. She was in New York now, wasn’t she? And they were always close, Hawkeye and Margaret, close in a way BJ never could quite understand.

"Yeah, Margaret. Blonde hair, five foot something, great lips. Remember her?"

"You've seen her?" BJ wishes he could move past this, but something is just making him unable to leave this topic. He frowns, not really knowing why hearing Margaret's name is making him feel like he's just ran into a wall.

Hawkeye glances over, his bright eyes full of humor, and he laughs, the sound sharp and loud and BJ wonders how he could have gone so long without hearing it. "Beej, you're jealous!"

"I am not." 

He is. He knows it now, can feel it eating away at him. And maybe he shouldn't be jealous, because he knows that there is nothing to worry; they were never like  _ that _ . And even if something did happen, it was before BJ had gotten the nerve to see him and Hawkeye still thought he would never see BJ again, so it doesn’t matter, not really. But still: he is jealous, and he doesn't know why the thought doesn't bother him more. He has the right to be jealous now, doesn’t he? Hasn’t he earned it, after everything? And maybe realizing he can be jealous about this, properly jealous this time, with a reason behind it and everything, maybe it’s a good thing, can be a good thing, can mean more than just that he is jealous, but that he finally has something to be jealous about.

"Oh nothing happened. Us kids know how to behave. We just talked," Hawkeye takes his hand off the wheel to reach over and grab BJ's and squeeze it. It's simple, a small gesture, but it makes BJ feel better, and he can smile again.

Boston is old and cramped and the streets are so narrow BJ thinks Hawkeye is going to crash the car three separate times, but despite all that, BJ is laughing at every joke Hawkeye is making and watching every building Hawkeye points out as they drive by. And maybe it has more to do with being out with Hawkeye, with taking a trip with him, with being beside someone who is bursting with passion for this place, but BJ can’t help but to love it too.

It takes them way too long to find the address than it should have. Hawkeye refused to ask for directions, confident that he knows the city enough to navigate it without help. By the third time circling around the same three miles of streets, BJ makes Hawkeye pull over so he could at least find out what direction they need to go. Eventually, they make it to the address Margaret gave Hawkeye: a house, just outside Boston proper. It's smaller than either of them thought it would be, something that could possibly be described as quaint. 

The neighborhood is quiet as they walk up the front walkway to the door, and BJ thinks that maybe this was exactly where Charles needed to be after the war: somewhere quiet, somewhere small, somewhere separate from his family.

They knock together, fists hitting the door just out of sync with each other. The sound is annoying, and really, could they give Charles anything but? It takes a few moments before the door opens and then Charles is there, looking at them for a second, processing what he is seeing, and then the door slams shut in their faces once again.

Hawkeye is already knocking again the instant the door closes. "Charles, open up!"

"Go away. I thought I had gotten rid of you when I left Korea." Charles's voice comes through the closed door and BJ just laughs as Hawkeye keeps knocking, now slamming his open palm against the door.

"Come on, Charles," BJ pleads, something so familiar coming over the three of them, an easy bickering, annoyance without any real heat behind it, "It's just us."

"And that is precisely the problem,"

"We are not leaving until you let us in." Hawkeye stops knocking and sends a smile to BJ like he just knows this is going to work.

And surprisingly, it does work. After a second of silence, Charles opens the door again with a sigh and steps aside to usher them in. "Gentlemen,"

Charles is glaring at them, the same perpetual glare he always gave them, and BJ laughs at it to stop the nostalgia from overwhelming him, nostalgia of a time in his life he wants no nostalgia over, a time where he’d rather forget than remember. And Hawkeye might be feeling the same way, because he doesn’t say anything as he steps inside, just gives Charles a pat on the cheek before turning in a circle to see the house around him.

During the drive here, BJ didn’t stop and think about what seeing Charles again would be like. They never were friends, not really, not in the sense of friendship he had formed with the other people in Korea, with Margaret or Radar or Klinger or Potter. But nothing else seems to fit, nothing else seems to properly describe their relationship. It was built on disrespect and condemnation, neither side taking a liking to the other, but there is understanding there, a shared experience none wanted to have. And maybe they are friends, in the loosest sense of the word, or maybe there are no words to describe a friend of war, a relationship that should never have happened, a bond formed in the worst of times.

Charles leads them through his house, mumbling which rooms are which as they pass through them, until they end up in the kitchen. Charles stops just inside the doorway, an expression of dread on his face.

There's someone in the kitchen, a man sitting at the table, and Charles is looking anywhere but, eyes avoiding any living person in the room around him. The man seems at home there, clearly not a visitor. He has a robe on and a book open in front of him. Two cups of tea sit with him on the table, one in front of him, half drunk, the other at the second place setting, an interrupted scene laying before them. 

The man doesn't even look up as he talks, his fingers turning the page of his book. "Who was at the door, Charles?"

Hawkeye is already looking at Charles with a grin and his eyebrows raised and BJ has to stop himself from laughing because this is not what he expected to find in Charles’s house.

"Uh," Charles clears his throat and finally looks at the man at the table. "It was, uh, some old acquaintances." 

"I'm BJ," BJ speaks up with a smile and the man at the table finally looks up, realizing that there are in fact more people than just Charles in the room with him. "This is Hawkeye,"

Hawkeye gives his own wave and then flashes a grin. "And who might you be?"

"This is Michael. He is my… roommate."

Charles keeps his composure, embarrassment barely peeking through the cracks as he looks between Michael and Hawkeye. And Hawkeye sees it, sees how much Charles doesn’t want to talk about this, not now, not ever, and for once, Hawkeye lets it go. He doesn't pry, he doesn’t push.

They don't say anything about it. They don't mention how they both know Charles would never need a roommate, would never want a roommate. And they don’t mention how they both know what roommate is code for, the word masking the true situation. Hawkeye just continues on talking, telling Charles that they couldn’t possibly stay long because they have dinner plans, and as Hawkeye keeps talking, keeps moving away from what a roommate means, Charles almost smiles.

The three of them end up in the living room eventually, Hawkeye and BJ stuck on a small couch with Charles positioned in an uncomfortable looking chair beside them. Michael interrupts every so often, asking if they need anything, each time resting a hand on the back of Charles’s chair and Charles sits stiff and still until Michael leaves the room and someone starts up the talking again. 

It’s nice: talking to Charles, seeing him after all this time, and BJ finds himself enjoying Charles’s company. Charles is happy, happier than BJ ever saw him before. They all are: happy in a way they never could be in Korea. Charles tells them about his work mostly, the hospital he is at, how much he has missed how boring it can be, doing expected operations day after day. BJ let’s Hawkeye talk as just listens, eyes wandering around the small room, always ending up on Hawkeye, watching the way his face contorts to the emotion of each word, passion giving way in his eyes, his cheeks, his hands. And he forces himself to look away when he remembers they are not alone. 

Eventually, somewhere between Charles telling them about a restaurant that had just opened, and Hawkeye ridiculing him about his taste in seafood, Hawkeye throws an arm around BJ’s shoulders and just keeps on talking, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. And it was, before, when they were in Korea, the war allowing certain intimacy between men not sanctioned in other areas of life. BJ almost shrugs the arm off, to at least try to keep the appearance of only friends, but then BJ sees Charles relax, looking at Hawkeye’s arm around him. He is watching the two of them with a question in his eyes that he will never ask, as they will never ask about his roommate. So BJ keeps the arm around his shoulder, and if he finds himself moving closer to Hawkeye so their legs are pressed together and he can feel the energy radiating out of him, then maybe it’s not a bad thing, not something he should stop himself from doing.

When the sun starts to set, Hawkeye springs to his feet unceremoniously, the arm that was around BJ’s shoulders hitting the back of his head as he stands. “My! Look at the time! BJ, my dear, we are simply going to miss our reservations if we don’t leave now.” 

There’s a mocking accent to his voice, but the words “my dear” catches BJ’s breath for a moment. But BJ is able to move past that, rolling his eyes, fighting off a fond smile that threatens to take over his face. “Ah, yes. I have to try the best soup on the east coast, if I remember correctly,” He stands and smiles at Charles. “We hate to leave so soon, but you’re probably dying to get rid of us.”

“While I can’t say I was expecting your two smiling faces, I will admit it has been a rather pleasant occasion,” Charles leads them back to the front door, pointedly not looking at them, like affection cannot be delivered with eye contact. Hawkeye gives BJ a look of disbelief, which BJ returns, silently communicating as they follow Charles to the door. It’s strange, to hear Charles be so direct in a compliment, to even admit it was nice to see them. But it’s a sign of the war, another indication that they are all different, affected by the horrors they saw together.

“Well, Charles, as you so eloquently put it: this has been a pleasant occasion,” Hawkeye says, standing just inside the open door. 

“Next time, pick up a phone before you show up at my doorstep. It would be greatly appreciated,” Charles sneers as BJ flashes a wide smile. He can hear Hawkeye laughing beside him, the sound quiet and low. They stay still for a moment, before Charles’s face breaks into what some would consider a smile, and he nods his head at the two of them. “Gentlemen.”

With that, they take their exit, leaving the house, leaving the neighborhood, making their way back into the city, Hawkeye navigating the streets with confidence, leading them to the restaurant they came here for. When they find it, it shocks BJ how small the restaurant is, almost a hole in the wall compared to the dramatic establishments that line the other streets, but BJ loves it because Hawkeye is almost bursting with energy as the waitress leads them to a table. 

Hawkeye lists the entire menu to BJ without even looking at it, describing each dish, the smell, the texture, the taste. And BJ lets him, lets him speak himself into a frenzy about the soup BJ is meant to try, and he feels love, with every breath he takes. He feels love sink into him, the sensation spreading out from his chest, reaching every inch of his being. It’s almost too much to understand, how he could feel this way, this strongly, because love was never like this for him, not before he met Hawkeye. It was never overwhelming, unexpected, full of warmth and light like the love that he is feeling now is. 

He had never found love in moments like these, so simple it’s laughable. But with each laugh he takes as Hawkeye moves onto the dessert menu, starting with the chocolate cake, BJ feels that love grow stronger. So maybe that's what love is, what this love between them started as and always will be: laughter at the moments between them, the world falling away and it is just the two of them, caught in each other’s orbits, destined to collide. 

They order, and BJ finds that he can still speak through this choking love that is holding him. And he has the soup, and the love is still there. And when they leave, he lets himself place a guiding hand on Hawkeye’s back as they walk to the car, and the love is still there. And they drive back to Maine, the darkness a comforting friend as the miles fall away and the radio plays songs BJ doesn’t bother to listen to, listening instead to the broken singing of Hawkeye as he remembers the lyrics. By the time they arrive at Hawkeye’s house, BJ is aching with this love, so as Hawkeye turns back to him after closing the front door, BJ kisses him, his hands going to his waist. And he feels Hawkeye stiffen for a moment, the slightest moment between shock and understanding, and then his hand is on BJ’s face, thumb brushing his cheekbone, and he melts into BJ.

BJ leaves 5 days later. He wants to stay almost as much as he wants to go, because he wants to stay here, holed up in Hawkeye’s house with him til the end of his days, but he needs to return to California. Erin is there, and even these few days away from home, away from her, has him missing her like he hasn’t seen her in years. And leaving Hawkeye now: it’s not like the last time he left. There is no finality to it, because BJ knows he will see him again. They don't even say goodbye this time; BJ doesn’t think he could even bring himself to say goodbye again, but Hawkeye doesn’t make him, because he just says “ _ see you soon _ ”, and the words are the best things BJ has ever heard.

Hawkeye drives him to the airport. He had kissed him before they had gotten into the car, and BJ can still feel that phantom pressure of warmth and care over his lips for most of the drive. He takes Hawkeye's hand halfway to the airport just because he can, just because he doesn't have to sit beside him any more, only wishing he could touch him. He takes his hand and it's easy and it’s everything BJ has wanted for so long.

BJ leaves. He takes a plane back to California. He leaves and arrives all at once: leaving one home to go to another. And he is already missing Hawkeye by the time he is boarding his plane, but it's not the same ache of missing him as before. It doesn't hurt, it doesn't pull his chest tight and make his heart hammer wildly. But it is still there, the feeling of being alone, of missing and being missed. By the time his plane lands in California, it's settled into the back of his mind, a comforting weight of missing someone, anticipation to see them again.

He walks through the airport to find where Peg and Erin are waiting to pick him up, and when he sees them, both smiling at him just like always, BJ feels okay. He didn't think he would feel okay at this, at leaving Maine, at seeing his wife again after everything that happened, after everything he let himself admit. But he does feel okay, and maybe even happy, and he hugs them both, knowing that he needs to talk with Peg, but the prospect of that conversation, one long in the making, doesn't fill him with nearly as much dread as it used to. 

They will have that conversation in time, but right now, he just needs to hug them, wrap his arms around them and tell them how much he has missed them, because it is true, and saying the truth still feels like he is swallowing the sun, but it’s okay, and everything is okay.

Three days. He lets three days go by without saying anything. He’s scared, of course he’s scared. His whole future is hanging on the outcome of a single conversation, walking the edge of a knife between what he has and what he wants. And maybe, really, it’s more about hurting Peg than him being scared of what his future holds. Because he knows what he wants now, has already gotten a taste of what he could have, that week in Maine the first time in his life when his future has been clear, when his heart was finally aligned with what he had in front of him. But he can’t let himself hurt Peg; he cannot bring himself to start the conversation that will lead to the end. To begin to end is a terrifying prospect even in the best of cases. 

That night, BJ sits in his office, a letter half written in front of him. He doesn’t know how to finish it, not when there is nothing to say. For three days he has avoided a conversation, not hiding from Peg, but just pretending everything was okay, that the end wasn’t barreling towards them, about to collide. And it has been good, the past few days, peaceful, almost like before. Almost. Peg kisses him, sits with him, lays down beside him at night, and BJ tries his best not to think about Hawkeye, how Hakweye had kissed him, or sat with him, or laid beside him at night. 

Maybe they’re both pretending that nothing has changed, because Peg isn’t asking him about his trip, and she isn’t asking him about who he went to see, and she isn’t even asking him how he is feeling now, after he has gone and come back once again. So maybe they’re both playing the leading roles in a play, acting their parts as husband and wife, knowing the end is coming but they just keep on performing because they can do nothing else.

There is a knock on the doorframe and BJ turns. The door is open and Peg stands in the doorway, watching him. She shifts, one foot taking most of her weight now, her arms hanging at her sides, and she looks at him with an expression BJ is forced to turn away from. 

He feels the fear clawing its way up his throat, guilt lining his lungs; every breath he takes feels like he is committing a sin. If he could say something, he would, but all he can do is listen as Peg walks calmly into the room and stops beside his chair. And then he finds a way to swallow his fear, push past all that is telling him not to, and looks up at Peg. She is looking at him with a love he doesn’t think he deserves, but he takes it anyways, takes what he is sure will be the last look of love she will give him.

“How was Maine?” Peg asks the question like it hasn’t been three days since he came home, like it hasn’t been three days of dancing around each other to the beats of marriage, with smiles and kisses all falling short of what they meant to be. When BJ doesn’t answer, can’t answer, his throat dry and his mouth unable to form any words, Peg shifts again, her body leaning against his desk. “How was Hawkeye?”

Maybe he should have expected her to know who he had gone to see. Maybe he should have told her at the start of all this. Maybe she had known all along, from the moment he returned to California, or even from the moment his letters first mentioned Hawkeye. Maybe he should have been more prepared to hear his name come out of her mouth, but the second those syllables fall into the air between them, BJ feels his heart beat, as if starting once again, the pulse strong and loud, and all he can do is not let himself cry at the name.

“He’s doing good, Peg.” BJ chokes the words out. They’re strangled and soft, and BJ wishes he could say them like it’s a good thing.

Peg’s hands twist in her lap, like she wants to reach out in comfort, to rest a hand on BJ’s shoulder just like she always does. But she keeps the hands in her lap, keeping the space between them, and BJ’s thankful, so thankful, because if she touches him now, he might burn.

“BJ, I—” He looks away as Peg starts to speak again, no longer able to watch her face. He wants to be okay with this, wants to be able to say what he needs to, but more than anything, he wants Peg to be okay, he wants Peg to be happy, he wants Peg to understand. Peg’s hands twist once again and she lets out a breath. “I want you to tell me what happened.”

“Peg, I don’t think I can.”

“Honey, please?” Peg is silent for a moment. And then: “Whatever happened, it’s okay.”

She says it with a confidence BJ is scared of, and there’s something under her words, some line of meaning that BJ can’t grasp. But she says it, and she leaves it at that, nothing added, no qualifiers. And maybe it’s all he needs to hear, to be told that it is going to be okay, because BJ feels like he can speak again, his head is clear, and he looks at the half written letter on his desk.

  
“I love him,” BJ stops, waits for the world to end. It doesn’t. He has to go on, so he does. “I asked him to come to California. We’re going to… I don’t know what we’re going to do. But we’re going to do it together, and I— I’m sorry, Peg. I’m sorry.”

BJ lifts his head and Peg isn’t looking at him, but maybe that’s alright because he can still breath and she is still there, just looking somewhere else. And there is something like a fire in his chest that is burning its way through him and with each word it grows stronger and he doesn’t know if it’s good, if the fire is one that brings warmth and light or one that burns and destroys. But he might very well be hopeless to the flame as he lets it grow within him.

“This past year, I tried. I tried so hard to go back to how we were. And I wanted to, god, Peg, believe me: I wanted to come home and pick up like nothing happened. I thought I could just shake off whatever was still holding onto me from Korea, but I couldn’t. I still felt empty, and broken up, and lost. No matter what I did, no matter what  _ you _ did, no matter how much time passed. I couldn’t stop hurting.” 

Peg looks over to him as his words falter, the second of silence deafening. Her expression is calm, eyes pleading him to continue. 

“And then I wrote Hawkeye a letter,” BJ laughs without humor, just anything to get him from one line to the next. He can feel the final act of the play they are performing coming to a close, each word from his mouth seems definite, like his last act as a dying man. “I wrote him a letter and when he replied I realized I couldn’t live without him. And then I left! I left you, I left Erin; I left to go see him and when I saw him, I finally felt whole again and it broke my heart because it wasn’t with you.”

Lights out. Curtain close. The show is over. No final bows. No standing ovation. Just the silence of his office and the stillness of Peg as she looks at him with her wide eyes and something like pain in them. And BJ can’t move, can’t look away, can’t say anything else, and maybe he depended on that performance to be able to go on, and now that it is over, he is stuck in the shadows of a dark stage. And maybe Peg did too, because she doesn’t say anything as she closes her eyes and turns her head, and BJ is certain she is going to leave, to be the one to walk off stage first, but she doesn’t go. She stays stuck in place as she slowly opens her eyes to watch the opposing wall.

“When you were in Korea, I invited Joan to live here with me and Erin.” Peg speaks slowly, the intonation of each word carefully neutral. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry that I was overwhelmed and needed Joan’s help. She wasn’t there to help me. She was there because I wanted her there.”

BJ waits in the silence Peg is leaving. Her mouth is open, the slightest part, preparing to speak, gathering her thoughts, aligning them exactly how she needs to say them. BJ waits through all this, waiting hours if he needs to, if that’s what Peg needs. He waits until, finally, Peg blinks, brows furrowing together.

“I fell in love with her without even realizing what was happening. One morning she was there just cooking breakfast, and when I looked at her, I felt something I never felt with you. Loving you was heavy, it weighed on me, but I let it because I thought all love was like that. But then with Joan,” Peg sighs, closes her eyes. “Loving her was easy.”

It is as if the universe has been born again, starting anew in the light of these words. A universe where BJ can breathe easy, where the pain in his chest has ceased and the aching feeling of guilt does not weigh as heavy as it once did. He can’t speak, can’t find the words to reply, but he takes Peg’s hand in his, hoping it can communicate all he cannot say. Because he understands what she is saying, has felt the love she is talking about, one so heavy and thick with expectations of how their lives should be, with a happy marriage and a happy family and a happy home. For so long, BJ thought that that love was just how love was; that love was a heavy thing, as if struggling for love would make it holy; as if to love meant to struggle, to feel the weight of the love in your lungs, your body, ever sinking slowly into the depths of what is drowning you.

When BJ takes her hand, Peg opens her eyes and looks at him. There are tears there but she smiles regardless. “I didn’t want to not love you, and being with you for all these years has made me so happy, BJ, please know that. I don’t regret being with you. I don’t regret marrying you. I love you, but I can’t be your wife anymore.”

Maybe their life has never been a play: two actors scripted and stiff performing around each other. And maybe that means it can’t end as simple as a play can, with a set cut off where all else stops and you are left with an empty stage and nothing more to act. And maybe life is never like a play, for plays only simulate life, an imitation of experience, and life, the whole understanding of life from birth to death, cannot be put on a stage, cannot even be written down. 

So it’s not a play, not a cheap imitation of emotion trying to hit at the human condition. It’s just their life, and now a part of it is over, but it is not the final act of a play where the only thing after the end is nothing. It is just life, life that you must endure, that everyone must endure. And as BJ looks at Peg, he does not see an actor performing the role of his wife, but he sees Peg, the woman he loved, still loves, and cannot love all at once. He sees her, sees the pain in her eyes as she knows where their relationship is heading, an ending always painful. But he sees hope, too, hope that soon she will be able to love so easily again, and he loves her for it, he loves that hope, and he feels it too.

A week before Hawkeye arrives in California, they sign their divorce papers. It’s easy, the process, the distribution of assets, custody arrangements, who gets what and when and where. There’s no arguments, just calm discussions of the future and what it holds for them. It’s a Monday when they finalize it, the last signatures to rectify their marriage.

BJ sits there, in the dingy office of a lawyer he has seen twice before, and all he can think about is how the papers in front of him should feel like a death sentence, but really only feel like paper. He signs his name, watching his hand create the lines of his signature over the unmarked surface of the page, and the world should be ending. That’s what he always imagined for this moment: the dread will choke him, and the guilt will blind him, but the true death of him will be delivered by his own hand as he signs his name on the dotted line. A deal with the devil; the death of himself. 

But death doesn’t come; the world doesn't end, and all he’s left with is a piece of paper that says he is no longer married.

He doesn’t understand what he’s feeling, whether it’s happiness or sadness making his heart beat. His tongue tastes sour, like he might be rotting from the inside out, so maybe he did die when he signed his name, maybe he is now a corpse that doesn't even know he’s dead yet. But something in the way Peg smiles beside him as he slides the paper over to her, something in the familiar, loving smile he has known since he met her, it makes him think that he can't possibly be dead, because how could he be dead when she still loves him? And maybe it’s not the kind of love they thought it was, thought it would always be, but it’s love all the same, and that’s okay. He is learning that that doesn’t mean the end.

Peg signs her name and he feels heavy, his lungs weighed down by the ink on paper and the feeling that everything is coming to a close. BJ feels it in his bones, this weight holding him in place, and the name of it is guilt. He’s dimly aware of the itching at the back of his throat and the clawing feeling of despair in his chest, but more than anything he’s confused, because why does he still feel this way, after everything, after all that has occurred between him and Peg? Why, now, does he still feel guilt?

Maybe it’s not guilt towards Peg, or even Erin, but a guilt that has built up for years inside him, weaving itself into his soul. Guilt about leaving the perfect life he had, ruining the American Dream everyone is thought ought to have. Guilt not directed at any one person, but guilt that settles into the core of his being, guilt like poison filling his lungs. Because he should very well be ruining his life; signing these divorce papers should not leave a future before him that is as hopeful as the one he has now. 

Everything he has been told, everything he has been taught, everything he has told himself, has said that a divorce is a destruction of a life, but for once, for one glorious moment, there is no destruction, there is no death around him. Only life. Fresh and new and full of hope, like a newborn baby, like the sun dawning a new day.

BJ closes his eyes as Peg sets the pen on the table. The guilt lingers, holding onto him with claws that dig deep into his heart, piercing, bleeding, sharp. But he takes a breath, forcing one out of him, and he turns his mind to the future. A future with Hawkeye at his side. A future where Peg is happy, fully happy and in love, living with Joan in her own perfect little life in Mill Valley. A future where Erin has four parents and two houses and all the love in the world. A future where the end doesn’t come, not for a long while, where Hawkeye doesn't leave, where BJ doesn’t leave, and where he can finally feel love how he’s meant to.

And the guilt will always stay there, a grounding force that serves as a reminder to how the world didn't end, and that’s something he can live with, something he has to live with. He opens his eyes and Peg is looking at him with an understanding only she can have, and he feels the guilt ease, replaced by a happiness he never gets tired of. And it’s not perfect, it’s messy and awkward and they still haven’t decided exactly how they should split up time with Erin, but maybe nothing in life is ever perfect and all you can hope for is happiness, or love, or just having faith in the future, and BJ is ready to have faith in it.

He meets Hawkeye at the airport and it’s a shock seeing him. It has not been long since he saw him last, but the way Hawkeye smiles when he sees him, it’s like it has been a lifetime. Hawkeye is carrying three bags with him, looking like he’s going to fall right over if anyone so much as looks at him in the wrong way, and all BJ can do is laugh at him as Hawkeye makes his way over.

“What a gentleman,” Hawkeye says in a huff as he drops his bags in front of BJ. “Not even offering to help me with my bags. I see how this is going to be.”

Hawkeye turns his shoulder at BJ with mock disgust and BJ wants to kiss him, to make the annoying sneer he has on his lips fall away, for him to know just how much BJ’s missed him. But he can’t.  _ Not yet _ , he reminds himself, and the thought is comforting, because it’s something he can do, something he’s allowed to do, in the safety of the four walls of their own home. 

So instead of kissing him, he picks up two of the bags, leaving the smallest on the ground at Hawkeye’s feet. “Our chariot awaits,” BJ says it with a roll of his eyes as he makes to leave, but it makes Hawkeye smile like he has just said the funniest thing, and BJ almost walks into a wall from the sight of it.

Halfway to the house, their house, their home, BJ gets nervous. He feels it start in his stomach, the anxious feeling like a pit of dread, black and solid sitting at the center of his body. It’s ten more minutes until he realizes he’s holding onto the steering wheel for dear life and a stiffness like death in his shoulders. He takes a second, eyes stuck on the road in front of them, letting his shoulders drop and his hands relax, and then he takes a glance over at Hawkeye. He’s sitting in silence beside him, head turned to the open window, almost sticking out of it, watching with rapt awe at the sights of California that have long since turned mundane for BJ, and he has to laugh. Laugh at this anxiety inside him, because for once, there isn’t anything to worry about.

Hawkeye looks over at the sound of laughter, catching BJ’s eyes for a second before BJ looks back at the road. “What’s so funny, Beej?”

“Nothing! It’s just,” BJ smiles and shakes his head. “I’m nervous.”

It’s silent for a moment, the only sound is air rushing past the open window, and BJ almost looks over again, but Hawkeye speaks before he can. “I am too.”

It’s something small, nothing to think about really: two people nervous to start something new. But for BJ, this nervousness is suddenly much bigger than the tension in his shoulders and the twisting in his gut, because he never thought he could have this, have Hawkeye and a life with him, and suddenly he does. He has it, it is in his hands, and he’s nervous. So nervous he feels like he might throw up and all he can do is laugh at himself for feeling this way, and that Hawkeye is feeling this way, because it’s all so stupid. After everything they’ve been through, everything they’ve seen, they’re nervous.

How wonderful the thought.

BJ laughs again because the nervousness is turning to joy, something alighting within him. He takes an exit off the highway and knows they’re only ten minutes from their house. The house Hawkeye hasn’t seen yet, not in person, only in a few black and white photographs Peg managed to take. He doesn’t know the couch BJ picked out, or the kitchen table that Peg let him have, or the color of the bathroom tiles, or how their bed looks in their bedroom. 

BJ has furnished the home, setting the stage for their lives, but together they will make it more than just furniture in a room. It’s awaiting the love and care and passion that BJ saw in Hawkeye’s house in Maine, filled with all the things he owns, proudly on display, like a museum of his heart. It’s something that BJ felt like he couldn’t do before, when he lived with Peg, the house around him feeling too empty to truly be a home for him, his body feeling too small to possibly fill the house around him.

They arrive, and Hawkeye is out of the car before it stops, giant steps bounding up to their front porch. He is walking the perimeter of the porch by the time BJ gets to the door and unlocks it, the key turning the new lock with a solid click. There is a moment between the sound of the lock and the push of the door that seems to go on for an hour, the world in stillness, on the edge of a cliff, tethering on it’s gravity as if deciding whether to take the plunge or not. And then the door is open and the front hallway is staring at them. 

Before BJ can do anything, before he can think or breath or even blink, Hawkeye is at his side, hand gripping BJ’s wrist in excitement. “Show me our house,” Hawkeye says and then makes a noise of excitement, his hand shaking BJ’s wrist. “Did you hear me? ‘ _ Our house _ .’ Ooh, I’m so excited!”

BJ takes him inside because he knows Hawkeye is going to continue talking if he doesn’t stop it, and the second they cross the threshold, Hawkeye’s grip slides from his wrist and into his hand. He can hear Hawkeye inhale, the sound sharp and loud.

“I dreamed of this,” Hawkeye smiles, but there is something somber underneath it, a river of emotion not yet tapped. “But I never thought it would happen.”

And maybe those words shouldn’t break BJ’s heart, but they do, because he has felt this, the hopeless despair of dreams, the sickening feeling of knowing what you want most is the last thing that you will ever get. It is how he lived for months, years if he is truly honest with himself, his whole life if he could let himself think about it, just wanting and wanting and wanting, his desires a list thousands of miles long. And never, not once, did he consider that what he wanted could come true, would ever come true. He was married; he was in Korea; he was supposed to be happy with the life he had, so all he could do was continue wanting, and continue denying himself any of these desires.

But somehow dreams come true, desires fulfilled, the crushing weight of knowing what you want will never be what you have lifting from his mind. He has dreamed of this too, of living with Hawkeye, of being with Hawkeye, of being able to hold Hawkeye’s hand in the simplest of situations, and all these dreams, desires, wants, have come true. And to hear Hawkeye voice the same, to tell him that he has dreamed of this, it hurts as much as it heals, because he knows the hurt Hawkeye felt, to dream and to know it won’t happen. It’s a painful understanding of how they got here, years spent at arms length, both wanting the other closer, neither acting.

BJ looks away from Hawkeye, turning his eyes further into the house, down the hallway, knowing what is awaiting behind each doorway. “Come on,” BJ says and pulls Hawkeye’s hand with him as he walks, moving towards the living room. “I’ll show you around.”

And he does show him around, going from room to room. As they go along, Hawkeye moves things, shifting the positions of chairs in one room or turning an object around in another, disrupting the perfect order BJ had arranged everything in, and BJ loves it. He watches Hawkeye change things with awe, as if these small actions are cementing the reality that this is their home, that they are both here to stay, that this is their life now.

Later, after BJ has shown him each room; after they had grabbed Hawkeye’s bags from the car; after they had met up with Peg for dinner, Hawkeye meeting her for the first time, falling into a friendship immediately; after all that, they find themselves in the middle of their living room. It’s almost midnight, the sky outside dark, stars just poking out from the blackness. 

Hawkeye is on the floor, looking through one of his bags, while BJ sits in a chair, quietly watching Hawkeye. He doesn’t have anything in his hands, no alternate activity to be doing in case Hawkeye looks over, but he doesn't need anything. He can stare at Hawkeye all he wants, and it’s freeing to do so, to stare at the side of Hawkeye’s face, contemplating his profile, how his hair falls just past the top of his ears, how his nose scrunches as he smiles at something he finds, how his eyes are in constant motion. He’s making up for lost time, for all the years he kept his eyes painfully away from him.

Hawkeye looks over, catching BJ staring. BJ doesn’t look away, he doesn’t need to. He just smiles as Hawkeye does the same. “Let’s put on a record. This quiet is killing me.” Hawkeye springs to his feet and bounds over to the recorder player before BJ can say anything. He shifts through the small stack of records beside the player, pulling out an album from the middle and slides the record out, positioning it in place before starting the recorder player. The first few notes of the song starts and BJ shakes his head.

“Ella Fitzgerald?”

Hawkeye looks at him, taking a few steps away from the record player. “ _ I’m glad there is you _ .” Hawkeye sings along to the words, ignoring the look BJ is giving him. He dances a few steps by himself before making his way to BJ, grabbing at his hands, trying to pull him to his feet.

“Really, Hawkeye?” BJ asks with feigned frustration as he gets to his feet anyways. Hawkeye ignores him again, simply taking his hands and swaying with the music, pulling BJ along with him.

“ _ I live to love, I love to live with you beside me _ .” Hawkeye keeps singing, lifting his hand to spin BJ with the music. BJ obliges, turning in a circle, finally letting his smile show. It’s a simple moment, but every detail is burning into BJ’s mind. The lighting of the room, the quiet hum of the recorder player heard just beneath the music, the way Hawkeye is looking at him, his eyes holding love, his smile cheeky, childish, shifting as he sings along, each word pointedly being spoken to BJ. He could live forever in this moment, the two of them dancing in the quiet confines of their house, the night closing in outside, but not penetrating the solid walls around them.

The song ends, fading into the next one, and Hawkeye drops BJ’s hands and claps his own together, breaking whatever lull that had fallen over the both of them. “Alright, I got knick-knacks to unpack. We got to liven this place up somehow,” Hawkeye goes back to his bag, this time pulling BJ along behind him. He stoops over, digging around until he finds what he is looking for. When he is upright again, he is holding the awful ceramic fish head BJ remembers from Hawkeye's own living room in Maine. BJ isn’t surprised he had brought it with, but it doesn’t make the figure any less ugly.

Hawkeye leaves BJ’s side, venturing over to one of the side tables positioned next to the couch. He places the fish head in the center of it and takes a step back, hands on his hips as he admires his work. “I think it looks perfect,”

BJ doesn’t say anything, because it does look perfect. It may be ugly, an eyesore in the worst of ways, but it doesn’t matter because it’s Hawkeye’s and it’s in this house and that means that this is Hawkeye’s house too. So it is ugly, the ugliest thing in the whole house, but it’s  _ their  _ god awful fish head, and BJ wouldn’t have it any other way.

He’s smiling like a fool, staring at Hawkeye, and he looks away before Hawkeye can point it out. And BJ is happy, a warm feeling settling into his bones as he realizes that this is not a one time thing, that there is no ending in sight. It is the first time that there hasn’t been an ending, inevitable, always one step away. In Korea, it was always in the back of their minds that one day they would leave each other. It was a fact of life, as hopeless to try to change as thinking they could stop the war themselves. They would leave each other, whether it would be death ripping them apart, or the end of the war. And then, in Maine, the visit was always temporary, a short period of time together, the end just around the corner. No matter what they felt then, no matter what they said, BJ was always going to go back to California. 

There is no ending here, and the prospect should be daunting, hanging over them just like the end always has, the endless just as scary as the finite. But it isn’t, and the long future stretching out before them is the easiest thing to mount, the easiest thing to conquer. And maybe the future won’t be perfect; there will be arguments and misunderstandings and fumbling around each other as they both try to find their place in this new life together, but all those things, things that terrified BJ just a few months ago, are not the threatening force they used to be. BJ welcomes them, all the future arguments and fights and misspoken words, because having them means being with Hawkeye, means his future has Hawkeye in it, and that is all he could ever wish for.

The rest of the night is spent placing all the trinkets Hawkeye brought with him around the house. There is a misshapen vase in the dining room, a small hand carved wooden horse figurine in the kitchen, a box of buttons in their bedroom. And placing these things, together choosing the spot, filling the house with objects of love, physical representations of care, BJ truly understands the comfort of a house. To walk into a room and see an object, full of memory, placed there with intent, kept for years because of love, it brings a feeling of nostalgia for a memory that is not even his own, and that nostalgia wraps around them with its warmth, filling each room with an easy peace. 

In their bedroom, placed upon the dresser, there is a picture of Hawkeye’s family: mom, dad, and young Hawkeye all grouped together, smiles filling their faces, the pure joy of those three bodies still bursting from the picture decades later. Beside it, there is a picture of BJ, Peg, and Erin, taken only weeks ago, the three of them close together in the shot, Erin in BJ’s arms, Peg’s arm around his waist. Seeing them together, side by side, it twists BJ’s stomach, but it is not pain that he feels, or guilt, or any of the other emotions that have plagued his life, that send him into darkness. 

He feels a lightness, affection, love, to know that this is where he is, that those two pictures belong beside each other, pictures of their families. And soon, BJ knows a third picture will be placed on the dresser, a picture of the two of them. BJ waits for that day, to see all three pictures together, to see the family he has now. And BJ waits for every day that is coming, anticipating their arrival, because he knows whatever they hold, he will be able to face it.

It’s one in the morning by the time they climb into their bed, and BJ lays on his back close to the edge, listening to Hawkeye breathing beside him. He wants to move closer, to wrap an arm around Hawkeye, to feel his breathing against him, but he can’t move closer, stopped by some force. So he lays there and hopes Hawkeye can find the strength to move, to break whatever tension that has fallen over them the moment the light turned off, as if their feelings are unbearable in the darkness, filling the room around them. 

BJ sighs, the sound loud in the quiet room, because this is stupid, because he wants to be close to Hawkeye, he wants Hawkeye’s head to rest on his shoulder and he wants to spend the night wrapped in Hawkeye’s arms. He wants to be able to move, to reach over and touch the man beside him.

His hands close into fists and he presses them against his eyes. He can’t move closer, but if he talks, then maybe this all can still be okay. And he finds his voice, the words coming out as a whisper. “Hey, Hawk?”

There is movement beside him, a shuffle of blankets, a sound like a hum. “Yeah, Beej?”

The moment Hawkeye speaks, the spell breaks and BJ can move. It’s like he was choking and now air is filling his lungs again. And he moves, sliding across the bed until he can see the dark shadow of Hawkeye’s body right beside him. Hawkeye is laying on his side, facing BJ, looking at him, expecting him. He can just make out the smile that is slowly spreading across Hawkeye’s face as he realizes that BJ is there, looking back at him through the darkness.

“Can I…” BJ doesn't know how to finish the sentence, doesn't know the words to describe what he wants in this moment. But he feels like he needs to ask before touching him, like Hawkeye’s going to shatter the moment he touches him, or he will be the one to break. 

Maybe Hawkeye knows what he is trying to say, or maybe Hawkeye doesn’t even care what he is trying to say, because he doesn’t say anything as he moves to BJ, his arm sliding over his chest, his head falling onto his shoulder. At his touch, BJ melts, like ice thawing in the heat, and he finds he can still move, that he hasn’t shattered, that this moment is still intact. He wraps his own arms around Hawkeye and turns his head to press a kiss into the top of his head.

“I love you,” BJ mumbles into his hair. His shampoo smells like lavender, and it’s all BJ can think about for a moment. The room is quiet and all that can be heard is the sound of their breathing. It might be the sweetest sound BJ has ever heard. He smiles. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“I am too,” BJ can’t see Hawkeye’s face, but he knows he’s smiling, the sound of it being heard in his words. 

BJ feels sleep pulling him down, his eyes stinging with exhaustion, each blink lasting longer. He tightens his arms around Hawkeye and turns his head so that his cheek is pressed against Hawkeye’s head, his hair soft against his skin. And he feels everything, a flood of emotion finding a home in his chest, each point of contact with Hawkeye sharp and comforting, alight with fire he feels burning in him. He sits in it, sits in this overwhelming feeling of emotion, and lets himself fall asleep, heart beating strong in his chest, Hawkeye’s arms around him a steading weight. He falls asleep, knowing that the morning will be bright, and Hawkeye will be beside him, and there is nothing more he could ask for.

Margaret visits them 8 months later. BJ’s excited to see her again, overjoyed, counting down the days. Almost two years have gone by since he last saw her, and though they’ve exchanged the occasional letter and talked on the phone once or twice, it’s not the same as seeing her in person. Hawkeye saw her the day before he came out to California, and from what he told BJ about that visit, Margaret has been thriving after the war, making a place for herself in the world, separate from the army, a life all her own. And most importantly, she seemed happy, happier than Hawkeye has ever seen her be.

But as her visit approaches, the weeks turning into days, a gnawing sense of worry begins to eat at BJ. And he’s happy, so happy to be seeing her again, but having her here, face to face, there is no barrier of a phone line or a piece of paper to block what she sees and what they say, no deniability of what is between Hawkeye and him. And it’s fine, should be fine, has always been fine, but now, BJ can’t help but worry, because when she sees them, see how they interact, sit together, live together, she’s sure to see that there is something more there, something more than friendship between the two of them. With all the correspondence BJ has had with her over these months, he never told her what was between him and Hawkeye. 

But his worry does not reside solely in the fact that they haven’t told her yet, or the uncomfortable reality that she will figure it out the moment she sees them, but the worry rests in this feeling BJ can’t shake that they  _ need _ to tell her, not that she will simply find out, but that they must tell her directly.

BJ has never been the one to tell people about Hawkeye and him; that’s Hawkeye’s duty, choosing who to tell, who to avoid. He left it to Hawkeye because BJ had never felt the need to tell anyone else, to extend the circle further than Daniel, Peg, and Joan. He was content to live a life others would consider a secret, but BJ has never once felt closed in by it. 

It’s more freedom than he has ever felt before, being able to love Hawkeye like this, being able to live his life with Hawkeye at his side. He doesn’t feel suffocated, like he is living a lie, because he had already lived a lie, already felt suffocated by the life he lived before this. He had lived his whole life choked by his lies, buried under the life he thought he needed to have. So now, just being able to tell Hawkeye he loves him is enough.

But when it comes to Margaret, his whole thinking of this life becomes twisted, as if not telling her would send him back, buried under thousands of lies he told himself. And he owes it to tell her, they both do, knowing Margaret had to put up with them in Korea. Or maybe it’s not that they owe it to her, or just that she had to put up with them, but simply that she is their friend, maybe the best friend they have, and to keep this from her is unthinkable.

BJ breeches the subject as they sit in traffic on their way to the airport. Maybe he should have picked a better time, one that isn’t right before they see her, but he never found the right time in the weeks leading up to her visit, and they’ve been sitting in the same spot for over five minutes now, and Margaret is all BJ can think about, so he asks, simple as that. “Does Margaret know about us?” BJ looks over at Hawkeye, hoping he’ll understand what he means. Sometimes, even now, months into this relationship, it’s hard to find the words to describe it, every word they try to define what is between them doesn't come close to what it really is.

Hawkeye raises his eyebrows as his eyes find BJ’s. His fingers stop tapping out the beat of whatever song the radio had been playing. “She knows we live together.”

BJ sighs, because, really, what did he expect? It wasn’t like the question of if Margaret knew they were together had been dancing around Hawkeye’s head; that was BJ’s burden. He tries to define it more, make what he means more understandable. “No. I mean—” BJ can’t finish the thought, words failing him again. He chooses to wave his hand in a vague gesture between the two of them in hopes it will compensate.

“Oh! You mean does she know that you love me?” Hawkeye is smiling now, wide and bright, like the sun on a burning hot day. It’s unbearable to look at, but BJ can’t look away. “I may have mentioned it to her.”

Hawkeye shrugs as if that information isn’t important, like he was just mentioning last week’s weather. BJ blinks, trying to find the point of this conversation again. “And?”

“And what?” Hawkeye shifts in his seat, sitting up straighter. “I told her I love you too, if you’re worried about that.”

“And what did she say? How did she respond?” BJ feels stupid, having to ask this, having to have an answer, because he can see this isn’t an issue for Hawkeye. He isn’t worried about Margaret’s opinion of them, or he has been worried, was worried when he told her, but any worry he had is gone. He knows the answer, so now he can just go on smiling like nothing is happening, like BJ is not being swallowed by his own anxiety. BJ can’t shake the feeling of doom that occurs whenever they decide to tell someone else about their relationship, the anticipation of hate, a sickly mix of dread and anger lodged in his throat.

Hawkeye’s smile turns softer as he watches BJ’s face, finally seeing the anxiety underlying his expression. “Beej, you’re not worried, are you?”

BJ looks away, confirming Hawkeye’s suspicion better than words. He just needs an answer, an exact, verbal answer, and then he’ll be fine. He already suspects what it is, that it will all be fine, because they are on their way to pick her up at the airport and BJ doubts she would have come to visit them if she hates them. But he needs to hear it, have Hawkeye actually say the words, as if they are not said then they can’t be true.

And Hawkeye sees this, knows this about him, because he reaches out and touches BJ’s shoulder lightly. “Beej, She’s happy for us! There’s nothing to be worried about,” His fingers move down his arm until they reach the end of his shirt sleeve, fingertips pressing into the skin just below the fabric in a comforting touch. BJ allows himself to smile at the news, his fears being banished by the simple words. Hawkeye withdraws his hand, his arm moving to rest along the back of the seat instead. His head tilts back, lazily hanging at an angle, eyes pointed at the roof. “She likes women, you know? Last time I saw her, she was talking about how she was seeing this woman. I forget the name, but she seemed pretty happy. Did I ever tell you about that?”

BJ can’t help but stare at Hawkeye as he keeps on talking, as if what he’s saying means nothing, as if it wasn’t revealing a large part of Margaret’s life BJ was unaware of. And it makes sense, what Hawkeye is telling him, if he lets himself think about it, but right now, he’s too wrapped up in the actual fact that Margaret likes women to examine any of the details surrounding it.

“What are you talking about?” BJ finally asks because he can’t think of a better way to phrase the jumble of thoughts in his head.

Hawkeye stops talking immediately, head moving to look at BJ fully. “I take it I didn’t tell you about her girlfriend.” It’s all Hawkeye can come up with before giving BJ a bashful smile. BJ doesn’t know if he wants to punch him or kiss him, so he just shakes his head instead.

“Is there anything else I should know about Margaret before we pick her up? Did her dog die? Got married again without telling me?”

Hawkeye takes a second to carefully think. “Well, she got a pet fish but it died after a week so I don’t think we should have any discussions about fish around her. Sushi is completely off the table.” Hawkeye smiles for a second, as if that answer was anywhere near satisfactory. His face lights up, another thought coming to mind as he slaps BJ’s shoulder with excitement. “Oh! And she’s allergic to lilacs!”

BJ shakes his head, knowing that he won’t be getting a serious answer out of him any time soon. But it doesn't bother him, knowing that if there was something else, something to know about Margaret, Hawkeye would have told him, so instead he lets a smile fall on his face. “Hawk, I’m going to kill you,” BJ says, but the threat is lost in the fondness of his voice and the smile on his face. Hawkeye just shrugs, his usual response to these half-hearted threats to his life, and turns up the radio. He moves arm to fully wrap around BJ’s shoulders, his fingers now tapping the beat of the song against BJ’s arm, and BJ settles into the touch, all his worries long gone as the traffic around them starts to move again.

The moment Margaret walks into their home, she stops in place, blocking BJ and Hawkeye from entering themselves. “It’s so clean in here!”

“We’re not pigs, Margaret,” Hawkeye says before shoving his way past her, dragging her suitcase in his wake. “We know how to clean up after ourselves.”

“Plus we have a four year old running around half the time, so that gives us a little motivation to keep it clean.” BJ smiles as Margaret finally takes a few more steps inside, giving BJ enough room to actually enter and close the door behind him.

Margaret gasps and turns to face him. “Oh, I’ve forgotten. How is Erin? Do I get to meet her?”

“She's doing good, Margaret,” BJ says with a laugh, unable to stop himself. He’s almost forgotten how passionate Margaret can get over the little things.

“Good? Try great. Fantastic. Exceptional.” Hawkeye shouts, his voice carrying from the other room where he’s putting away Margaret’s suitcase. He walks back to them as he continues to talk. “Just last week she recited the entire alphabet.”

“It wasn’t in order,” BJ reminds him with a shake of his head.

“She got all the letters. It still counts,” 

“Erin is staying with Peg while you’re here, but we can see them if you want to,” BJ says, answering Margaret’s second question instead of arguing with Hawkeye.

“Oh I would just love that. And I would love to meet Peg,” She pauses a moment, eyes shifting between Hawkeye and BJ. “If that’s okay with you. I know how after divorces—”

“Margaret, it’s fine,” BJ smiles, because it is fine. There’s no awkwardness between him and Peg, no tense silences or uneasy conversations. Seeing her doesn’t make him think of the past, of all the years he spent with her, or all the times he left her. They get along as they always have, even better now that they don’t have the pretense of marriage to attempt to perform. “Peg would be just overjoyed to meet you.”

They move on after that, Hawkeye taking over, his energy encompassing the whole house. He planned meticulously for this visit. The moment Margaret confirmed she was indeed coming, Hawkeye began to scrounge up every idea he could come up with for them all to do, every museum they could take Margaret to, every beach, every restaurant, every bar, every meal he wants to make her, every song he wants to listen to her. He wrote it all out, every idea listed down, spanning six pages, and spent a whole afternoon sitting with BJ on their living room floor deciding which ideas could happen. 

Hawkeye’s trying to make up for lost time, BJ knows this, knows he misses Margaret, knows being so far away from her takes a toll on him. BJ still doesn’t understand their friendship, not entirely, but it’s like Margaret’s a lighthouse in a storm, a guiding, god-like force to stem back destruction. Her presence, simply being in Hawkeye’s life, helps him more than he will ever let on, more than he will ever tell her. And BJ sees this, knows it despite Hawkeye never talking about it, so he helps Hawkeye plan for this visit, spending hours with him crafting a perfect itinerary. 

That night, after they successfully completed every item Hawkeye had planned for the day, the three of them end up in the dining room, a bottle of cheap wine being passed between them. BJ feels good, the mix of the alcohol and just being with Margaret again setting a permanent smile on his face. He misses this, the three of them together. He can’t think back on the memories for too long, because other details will slowly creep in. The memories of the three of them are drowned in despair, of where they were, of what was around them, of the blood on their boots and on their hands and on their clothes. But it’s all he has, so he still holds on to them, the memory of their laughter deafening, silencing the despair that wants to cover them. 

Margaret sits back in her chair, her eyes moving from BJ over to Hawkeye and then back to BJ. “You two are happy,” It’s a statement, solid and strong and confident. Margaret grabs the bottle from Hawkeye and waves it at them. “I’m proud of you for getting your shit together.” She takes a drink from the bottle and sets it on the table, the glass hitting the wood hard. It sends Margaret laughing, the laughter spilling out of her before she stops it and levels them a look. “I swear, if I had to hear how much Hawkeye missed you one more time, I was going to fly to California and drag you back to him myself.”

They laugh, though it’s not particularly funny, but they laugh and it’s like old friends laughing together, but with this one freeing burst of laughter, it is new friends laughing together too, learning how their friendship has shifted and sustained since coming home. They are all different people from the ones they were in Korea, with war around them, with being forced there, with death saturating every hour of their lives. With this laughter, with this visit, with being together in peace, with death a faraway thought and no blood in sight, they are learning of the new people they all are now and loving them just the same. 

BJ leans towards Hawkeye as he closes his eyes, the sound of the laughter around him making his own grow stronger. His shoulder hits Hawkeye’s, the impact like a shock to his body, and Hawkeye grabs his wrist, as if he needs to ground himself, to bring himself back from near hysterics he is quickly going towards. And the touch feels like electricity jolting through BJ, sharp and present and making him aware of everything around him. 

The three collect themselves; Hawkeye takes his hand off of BJ’s wrist, and brings his legs up into the seat with him, sitting almost cross legged. Margaret stops her laughter quickly, and looks at them with a sober look that breaks into a smile once she meets BJ’s eyes. “What you have here is nice. The life you’re making— I wish I could have that.”

A second passes where no one says anything, no one moves, Margaret continuing to smile calmly at BJ like her words are not heartbreaking, are not revealing of a deep sadness. But then Hawkeye leans forward, staring so intensely at Margaret it’s like if he looks away then she’ll vanish. “What do you mean by that?”

Margaret blinks, as if she didn’t even realize what she had said, and her smile is gone, replaced by something like a frown. BJ can see the walls going up again, a cold barrier blocking them out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about”

“Margaret,” Hawkeye’s voice is low, his hand placed halfway across the table, halfway to Margaret. She shifts at her name, looking away, looking at BJ, as if she might find solace from Hawkeye’s questioning in him. BJ doesn’t know what to do, but all he wishes is to see the walls go down again, for Margaret to stop protecting herself from them, to realize they would never hurt her. 

“Why can’t you have a life like this?” BJ asks, and the look that comes over Margaret’s face is close to betrayal. She turns her head away, like she is looking behind her, and when she looks back, there are tears in her eyes. She focuses on the middle distance, eyes not on either of them. 

“I don’t get happy endings,” Margaret frowns at herself. “You two found each other and fell in love and now get to live that happy fantasy we all dream about as kids. But my life doesn’t work like that. It never has and never will. I get happiness, I love, and then it all gets taken away. The ending is always the same.”

“I thought you were with—?” Hawkeye starts, but his words fail as Margaret looks directly at him, and it’s clear that that has ended too, another love gone away, the wound fresh and bleeding, even hearing the name would infect it.

It looks like Margaret might bolt at any second, her shoulders ridged, eyes shifting around the room, but then she reaches for the bottle of wine still sitting on the table and takes a drink, and BJ thinks that she’s going to change the topic, push right past what is happening, and that might be worse than if she left. If she just sat there and ignored the pain she had shown them, it would hurt worse than never seeing her again.

BJ takes a breath and waits for Margaret to put the bottle down. “Margaret, you can have this life. Believe me, you can.” He tries to put everything he cannot speak into those words, because he understands what she is saying, what she is thinking, the crushing knowledge that you will never be happy because that is just how life is. BJ thought the same for years, thinking that to be happy and to live a good life are two things that just don’t work together. And it hurts, thinking that way, certain you are destined for a lifetime of hurt, unhappy endings, wounds that just won’t heal. BJ can see his own pain reflected in Margaret’s eyes, pain that he was able to fix, and now all he wants is to fix Margaret’s.

She looks at him with heartbreaking coldness, her face carefully neutral, yet eyes shining with pain. “I can’t—” Her voice breaks off and she looks away. BJ forces himself to look away from her, as if his eyes on her are the only things preventing her from speaking. He finds Hawkeye already looking at him, something pleading in his face. 

BJ wants to say something more, to tell Margaret he understands how hopeless it all feels, like the hole she has dug herself into just keeps getting deeper, and soon she’s afraid she won’t even be able to see the sun. And it’s the expectation, burying her under the ground, how she believes she needs to be seen: strong, emotionless, yet the perfect wife, devoted to a husband. It’s hard, to stop the expectation, to not let it prevent you from being who you want to be. It’s a life long lesson learned from the age of one and does not stop being taught until you die, and to stop trying to listen to it, to go against what is prescribed for you, it is a terrifying prospect in the world around them.

Even now BJ still feels the pull of expectations, the anxious feeling that he is not performing his life to the right degree, but being with Hawkeye, it stops that expectation from ruling his life. Just looking at Hawkeye, simply being in the same room as him, it stops all questioning about where he is, all doubt that he is in the wrong place. From the moment he first met Hawkeye, he knew he was always meant to be at his side, and no amount of guilt over not living to be the perfect husband to his wife could ever change that.

But Margaret doesn’t have that person; the person closest to a Hawkeye in her own life had left, just like the others before. To face the world alone while trying to be something that the world does not want you to be, it’s a hopeless circle of falling right back into line, stepping right back into the role assigned to you. And BJ sees that in Margaret, how unsure she is that she can face this world as who she is instead of who she is thought to be. She sees the happiness in their life together as miles away, utterly unreachable.

The silence is almost unbearable, the three of them sitting in this stillness, no one talking, no one even looking at the other. And then, Margaret speaks, quiet, as if she’s trying to say these words without making a sound. “It’s different for me, you have to understand that. My whole life, I knew that I couldn’t have what I wanted, so I settled for what was around me, what I could get my hands on. Whatever man happened to be near me, I told myself I could love him. And I got so good at lying to myself, I almost began to believe it. With Donald, I thought that I found it, someone that I could make myself happy to be with. And it almost worked, until he left me.”

Margaret stops, taking the bottle off the table but doesn’t drink from it. She holds it in her hands, watching the liquid inside. It’s dark, and she moves the bottle to keep it swirling inside, as if the motion is hypnotizing. 

“I was always told that women who loved women are some of the most abominable people to have ever lived. I didn’t think much of it, until I realized I was one of them and I knew I could never let anyone know that for as long as I lived.” Margaret shifts, one leg crossing over the other. “I got pretty good at hiding it, and before long, I stopped being bothered by that part of me. It was so much easier to ignore those feelings than to even allow myself to think about them. But then Donald left me, and it was like I couldn’t find the strength to ignore it anymore, and then Helen came back into my life and my world turned upside down. I didn’t know what to think, or how to act, but those two months she was there with us at our unit made me happier than I had been in years.”

“Helen Whitfield?” Hawkeye asks, and hearing the name takes BJ by surprise, because he remembers it too, those months Helen was at the 4077. He barely saw Margaret outside of the OR or post-op, always holed away in her tent with Helen, or at the officer’s club with Helen, or eating in the mess with Helen. And at the time, it wasn’t notable, that almost constant nature of them being at each other’s sides, because they were old friends after all, and there’s comfort in familiarity. 

Margaret finally looks away from the wine bottle, and when she looks at them, her eyes are dry and her mouth is set in a frown. She nods, the movement solem, gravely important. “And then she went home,” A smile flickers on her face, but is drowned by another scowl. “And when I came back to the states, I just thought I might give happiness a shot. I met this woman, Eileen, and she was smart, thoughtful, and didn't even mind when I woke her up in the middle of the night by screaming in my sleep. And it was good. For a year, I was happy, really happy, the way you two get to be happy now. But then she left, said I was too intense for her, cared too much, about her, about my work, about the world. Just one more person to leave me,” Margaret laughs, the sound short, humorless. It makes BJ’s skin crawl. “It’s funny. I thought I could have spent my entire life with her, but I forgot everyone leaves me.”

Her eyes are on them, and there is something like fury behind them, a raging fire just beneath the surface. It’s uncomfortable, being watched like this, her two eyes feeling like thousands. And maybe it’s the time of night, maybe it’s the alcohol, maybe it’s the heartbreak lining every one of Margaret’s words, but BJ feels like he might break, as if this moment, solitary and stationary, is the only thing holding him together, keeping him from sinking into the despair in Margaret’s words. 

Margaret blinks and wipes her eyes, giving a quick shake of her head, ready to move on. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

“Why don’t you write Helen?” BJ says suddenly, the thought coming quickly, springing into his mind out of nothingness. And he can’t think of anything else to say, because there is nothing more to suggest. He knows the pain she is suffering through, maybe not entirely, but partially, and he knows Margaret, and he cannot fix her pain, magically say a few sentences to take away all that is weighing on her, but he can try to help her begin to heal. This is the only way he can think of: for her to go back to the person who brought her happiness during hell, who left her not because she didn’t love her anymore, but because she just couldn’t stay. 

Margaret’s eyes meet his and there is only fear in them, as if to even think about writing Helen again would kill her. And maybe that’s true; maybe writing Helen would kill the remaining shreds of the person she pretended to be for so long, and after that happens, she couldn’t keep hiding, couldn’t keep lying to herself, couldn’t keep following the expectations set forth for her. But it might be all that she could do, to kill this part of her, to finally let go of what she cannot be.

“She would love to hear from you,” Hawkeye speaks with confidence, like he has no question that his statement is true. “God, Margaret, she’s probably sitting at home waiting for you to write to her. I saw how you two acted with each other and she was crazy about you. I doubt she hasn’t stopped thinking about you. Take if from someone who spent a year thinking about someone he never thought he would see again.”

Margaret is looking at the floor now, hands twisting around the wine bottle still in her hands. “It’s not that easy. It’s not like you two.”

“Easy? You think this was easy?” BJ asks, and his words must have startled Margaret because she looks up, staring at BJ like the world is on its side. “I spent six months trying to convince myself I loved Peg and not Hawkeye. Hell, I was so wrapped up in guilt, I couldn’t even speak about Hawkeye with her. The only easy thing was loving him, the rest was hard.”

For a moment, somewhere between his voice going silent and the next tick of the clock, BJ feels vulnerable, ready for this to ruin him, because the truth is still so hard to say sometimes, each word sticking in his throat, forced out only by his own promise to himself to stop this lying. But the truth is necessary; in moments like these, the truth is all you can offer, the horrible, bleeding truth. But then that agonizing, aching moment of vulnerability passes and he can feel Hawkeye’s smile on him, but he keeps looking at Margaret, hoping that this truth offers any kind of comfort for her, that maybe knowing the struggle of another will allow her to struggle just the same. 

And then the fear drops from her face, and a calm smile appears on her lips, and all BJ can do is return to smile, because he can see that something has broken free within Margaret, one part of her has begun to heal. And when she speaks, he knows that maybe she is not alright, that maybe her heart still aches and she still cannot truly be okay with who she is and what she wants, but she is hopeful, she is not being buried by her pain. She does not need to be alright, not just yet, because healing is a process, but it is starting, the wounds are finally beginning to close, the pain beginning to subside, and maybe that is all anyone can ask for.

“Thank you,” Margaret says with a sincerity unlike any other. And she’s thanking him for more than his advice, but for all the things that he has done, all the times he has been there for her. Thanking him for having met him, both of them, the thank encompassing Hawkeye as well, their relationship, their friendship, the care he exhibits towards her. It is two words, but they mean more than any words could ever say: an unending gratitude for their friendship, for their understanding, for the care and respect between the three of them that has grown out of nothing and led them here.

The rest of Margaret’s visit passes smoothly. She meets Erin, falling in love with her the moment she sets her eyes on her, and she meets Peg, getting along like a house on fire, the two of them staying behind to talk together while BJ and Hawkeye take Erin out to lunch. And they show her San Francisco, taking her to the restaurants Hawkeye has fallen in love with, and the museums they think she would enjoy. They take her to the beach, the three of them spending an hour just staring at the ocean. And when Margaret has to leave, the three of them in the car, driving to the airport, it’s hard to say goodbye, to let her fly across the country again. Having her with them, talking to her, seeing her laugh, it has made BJ miss her more than he ever had before, miss her even when she is still beside him. BJ wishes she could stay, but her life cannot be put on hold to stay in California with them. And they have not mentioned that night, but BJ knows Margaret has not forgotten it, that she has things she needs to do back in New York.

When she says goodbye hugging each of them fiercely before stepping back, Hawkeye smiles easily, handing Margaret her suitcase. “So what are you doing when you get home?”

She looks between them and takes her suitcase in her hand. “I’m going to write a letter,”

And BJ knows that whatever the future looks like for Margaret, it is going to be happy. Maybe not right away, maybe not for months, but she will have that happiness she was so certain she would never receive. BJ smiles and hugs her again because anything he could say would fall short of what he really means, so a hug is better, because that way he can hold her tight against him for a moment and she will understand how much he cares about her without even needing words.

Margaret turns back to look at them one more time as she walks away, a wave of her hand and a fond shake of her head as both of them wave back with a quick wave of their fingers and accompany smiles. They watch her walk away until she is lost in the crowd, and even then they wait, standing in place as people rush past around them, hurrying to catch their flights. BJ moves first, turning around to make their way out of the airports. He places a hand on Hawkeye’s shoulder and turns him.

“She’ll be fine, Hawk,” BJ says, keeping his hand on Hawkeye’s shoulder for a moment longer before dropping it. They start to walk.

“I know,” Hawkeye says with a glance at BJ. A smile is almost on his face. “She’s the strongest person I know.”

Three months later, a letter comes in the mail. It’s from Margaret, the first letter since she came to visit them. It’s addressed to both of them, but BJ gives it to Hawkeye to read first, knowing that he has been waiting to hear from her since the second she left. They both have, but BJ knows Hawkeye needs this letter more than him, needs it to know for certain that Margaret is doing alright, that she is happy. 

The letter is short, as most of her letters are, kept to the basics. She prefers talking to writing, so every letter they get from her is not longer than four pages, no matter what she writes about. Margaret doesn’t shy away from what she means to tell them, does not dance around the subject for a paragraph of pleasantries before diving in to why she is writing, what they are expecting from her.

Margaret wrote Helen; the day she came home from California, she sat down and wrote. It took her three tries for her to write something that she could send, three tries to find the words to say all she needed to. She got a reply a week later, Helen telling Margaret she is coming to see her, that she has been waiting for a letter from her for months, since the war ended and she knew Margaret was coming back to the states. And Helen came to visit her, planning to stay for three days, but those three days grew into a week, and that week turned into a month, and somewhere after five weeks, Margaret stopped expecting Helen to leave, and Helen stopped expecting to be turned away.

It was hard, Margaret tells them in her letter, to let someone into her life again, someone that means so much to her. And it was hard to accept that Helen wanted to be there with her, that she wasn’t staying with her out of pity or something worse. She understands what BJ meant now, when he said to love was the easy part, the easiest thing in the world once you allow yourself to love.

At the end of her letter, she invites them to visit her and Helen. It doesn’t specify a date, this open invitation the easiest way to tell them that her home, her heart, is always open to them. BJ knows they’ll see her again within the year, knows that they can’t stay away for too long, a constant pull back towards her felt every day, the miles between so large, yet almost unimportant, shadowed by a friendship that has suffer more than distance and time, built on an unshakable foundation.

After reading her letter, Hawkeye folds it with care, not wanting to disrupt a single word written. He moves closer to BJ, resting against his side, taking his hand in his own. Nothing is said, but BJ knows what Hawkeye is feeling, because he feels it too: a deep seated comfort, resting solidly inside him, because Margaret is happy, healing, finding that she can, in fact, have a life like theirs. A life saturated by happiness, lined with love; a life that BJ never thought he could have, yet with each passing day, each month going by, each smile Hawkeye gives him, each kiss, it’s getting easier to believe that he can have this, that this is real, that he deserves this. And he knows, as time goes on, Margaret will know this too; the thought that this life could never be hers one day will become a far away thought, lost in the past, healed by time and love.

When Erin is eight years old, they take her to Maine. It’s not the first time they’ve been back; they go back every year, staying for a week or so, taking the time to see Daniel, and visit Margaret and Charles. It has become an yearly tradition to show up at Charles’s doorstep, always uninvited and unannounced, but he always begrudgingly welcomes them in. With Margaret, they see her more often. She visits them in California in the winter months, coming for a medical convention or sometimes just because she missed seeing their faces. But when they visit Maine, they always spend at least a day with her and Helen, galavanting around New York like they are twenty years younger than they actually are. 

On their yearly visits to the east coast, Hawkeye takes BJ to see all the different towns that BJ’s never seen and Hawkeye knows intimately, like the back of his hand, listing places to visit, and foods to try. They are not strangers to this coast, though they live on the other one, Hawkeye never able to stay away for too long. When Erin is older, off to college, they will move back, BJ knows this as sure as he knows the parts of the body, but for now, they have to stay in California, settle for trips to the east coast to sway the tide of longing in Hawkeye’s heart.

Despite their yearly visits, this is the first time they take Erin, the first time she is leaving California, in fact, the first time she is meeting Daniel, the first time they have really taken a trip with Erin, taken her somewhere more than two hours away. And it’s odd, going on the plane, Erin in the seat between them, watching her surroundings with the awe only a child has, because it feels domestic in a way BJ never felt before. It’s different from the other things, like living together, eating together, doing laundry together, the domesticity with Hawkeye he has grown accustomed to long before he has ever kissed him. But with this trip, there’s a difference in audience, a difference in location, the privacy gone now, the walls no longer in place, shielding their lives from the world. It’s not that BJ’s nervous, the hammering in his heart is not anxiety, but love for the family he has, realization that he gets to do this: go on a trip with his daughter and the man he loves. 

Erin hates the plane, the turbulence making her scream and the pressure in her ears unbearable, but the whole way there, Hawkeye tells her jokes, keeping her laughing even through her fear and discomfort. When the plane lands, Erin holds on to both of their hands, her grip tight, squeezing hard as the wheels hit the ground and the cabin shakes from the impact. She doesn’t let go until they have to stand to exit the plane, and even then, when they are finally out and on solid ground, she holds onto Hawkeye’s hand as they walk through the airport, and Hawkeye still keeps on trying to make her laugh, seeing the fear still churning inside her.

By the time they rent a car and start driving up to Crabapple Cove, Erin is asleep in the backseat, the day a grueling one for her so far. Hawkeye talks aimlessly on the drive, filling the silence with whatever comes to his mind first, starting with a new surgical technique he read about last night, telling BJ about it despite BJ being the one to show him the article. He jumps subjects as he sees ducks swimming around in a pond they pass, spending a full ten minutes describing the time he took care of a duck as a boy, setting the broken wing of the bird, nursing it back to health with the help of his mom.

Erin wakes up when Hawkeye is talking about the moon, listing the different phases of it: waxing crescent, waning gibbous, third quarter, new.

“You talk too much,” Erin mumbles, still half asleep. She rubs her eyes and sits up, looking at where they are. The landscape of Maine surrounds them, trees lining the side of the road. Erin doesn’t pay much attention to it, looking at BJ instead. “Daddy, did he even care that I was sleeping?”

“Oh, yes he did, Erin. If he didn’t, he would have been singing, too.” BJ smiles at her through the rear view mirror. Erin sighs, the dramatic way she picked up from Hawkeye, and crosses her arms, slumping down in the backseat, as if being woken up has been the worst thing to have ever happened to her. BJ laughs watching her frown even more at the sound.

They go to Daniel’s first, driving directly there, not even stopping at the house Hawkeye still owns, though it is just down the street. Daniel is expecting them, and when they arrive he’s sitting out on his porch, a game of solitaire laid out on a table before him. He rises to his feet and is down the steps as BJ is opening the door for Erin to climb out. 

Hawkeye goes directly to his dad, hugging him, arms holding on tight. One of the worst things about living in California, needing to stay in California, is Hawkeye being away from his dad again. BJ can’t think about it for too long, or he’ll get the idea to just leave California now, to close the distance between Hawkeye and his dad that never should have been there again. But Hawkeye tells him it’s fine, knows BJ worries about it, telling him that he has spent years on the other side of the world from his dad, and the distance from coast to coast is nothing compared to that. 

Erin stays at BJ’s side after she gets out of the car, looking over at Daniel cautiously, not knowing what she wants to do. He looks down at Erin and smiles once she looks up at him. “That’s Hawkeye’s dad,” He says, and shrugs, letting her know the option for what to do next is up to her. “Do you want to go meet him?”

Her head turns away from BJ, looking back to where Hawkeye and Daniel are still talking at the bottom of the porch steps. When she looks to BJ again, there is a smile on her face and she nods. “Yeah,”

BJ walks with her across the yard, keeping a hand on her back as she walks, letting her know he is there. She has always been nervous about meeting people, shy around strangers, but BJ hopes she is okay. She had wanted to come to Maine this year, wanted to meet Hawkeye’s dad and see all the places they talk about, and eat all the food Hawkeye raves about, but wanting and actually doing are two separate things, BJ knows this. Wanting is easy, but following through is difficult. But Erin keeps on walking, not even hiding behind BJ as they get to the porch steps and Hawkeye stops talking and turns to greet them with a smile. 

Daniel smiles as he looks away from his son, giving the same fatherly love to BJ. “It’s good to see you again, BJ.” Erin shifts at BJ’s side, her foot sliding across the ground, and Daniel turns his attention on her, crouching down with effort to be at her eye level. “You must be Erin.”

Erin nods and looks up at BJ, as if she needs his permission to speak. BJ raises his eyebrows, and Erin looks over at Hawkeye, like whatever answer she was trying to get out of BJ wasn’t what she wanted so she needed a second opinion. Hawkeye shrugs, seeming to have a silent conversation with Erin, as if telling her she can do whatever she wants: answer his dad, not answer, ask to fly back to California right this second.

And then Erin finally looks back at Daniel. “I am,” She pauses, smiles, goes on. “And you’re my grandpa.”

Hawkeye has to turn away at that, hiding his face, body almost fully turning around. And BJ doesn’t know what to do either. They never talked about what Erin should call Daniel, the thought to discuss it slipping their minds completely, as if they assumed she would just call him by his name. 

Erin started calling Hawkeye “Dad” after they lived together for a year and a half. The first time she called him that, she was hesitant, unsure if she could say that, give him that title. And it stopped BJ’s heart, hearing his daughter call Hawkeye that, considering Hawkeye her father too. Hawkeye had responded to that title after a few seconds, a look of shock and something akin to fear in his face before he replaced it with a flowering smile for Erin.

Hearing her call Daniel her grandpa stops BJ’s heart just the same, his heart in his throat, chest tight with sudden affection. The simple reminder that this is his life, this is his family, is a shock every time he hears it. He looks at Hawkeye, who is still turned away, a hand gripping the railing beside him, knuckles white. He can’t do anything now, can’t say anything without making it sound like Erin has said the wrong thing, so he stays quiet, and tries to swallow the lump in his throat.

Luckily this does not catch Daniel off guard, does not stop him in his tracks like it does to Hawkeye and BJ. He smiles at her and laughs, the sound full and hearty. It makes Erin smile. “Boy, are you a smart little girl,” Daniel rises to his feet, pushing himself off the ground by his knee. He holds a hand out to Erin, welcoming, friendly. “Why don’t we all go inside? I just happen to have ice cream. Would you like some, Erin?”

At the mention of food, Erin’s eyes light up, her head quickly nodding to accept the offer. “I would love some,” She takes Daniel’s hand and begins to pull him along, her hesitancy of only minutes before nowhere to be found.

As they get to the stairs, Hawkeye has collected himself enough to look at them again, his eyes going from Daniel to Erin and finally settling on BJ. They stare at each other for a moment, BJ waiting to see if Hawkeye wants to talk, to mention what has happened, but all Hawkeye does is smile and takes BJ’s hand, pulling him up the stairs just as Erin did. “Come on, Beej. You heard him: he has ice cream!”

An hour later, after the ice cream, after Hawkeye had taken Erin around the property and shown her his own house down the road, Daniel sends Hawkeye and BJ shopping, giving them a list and ordering them out of the house. They both know it’s a blatant attempt to spend time with Erin without them, to get to know her without her parents hovering over her. Daniel knows they know this, BJ can see that from the smile he gives them when he hands over the list, but they go anyway, leaving Erin with Daniel and driving to the small grocery store in town. 

Hawkeye spent a summer there bagging groceries once, the story coming to mind as they take the three minute drive to the store. The last time they were sent to get groceries when they visited, Hawkeye told him about it: how boring it was, how many melons he dropped, how many cartons of eggs he cracked. It was a wonder he wasn’t fired after a week.

Hawkeye grabs a cart on their way inside, his body immediately slouching over the handlebars as he pushes it ahead of him. BJ follows Hawkeye through the store, listing off each item and letting Hawkeye expertly guide him through the aisles, knowing exactly where each item is without a second thought.

“They haven’t changed the layout of this store since the 20’s.” Hawkeye says as he grabs a can of green beans off the shelf and places it in the cart. “You know, I was so worried that they changed it after I got home from Korea, I didn’t go shopping for three months.”

Over the years, it had gotten easier to talk about that: the war, how it affected them, what had happened over there, and what had happened after they had come home. Hawkeye told BJ about the extensive therapy sessions he went to for four months when he came home, spending hours with a psychiatrist, trying to find a way to feel like he deserved to be home. He told him about how he had broken down the first time he saw Margaret. She reminded him of Korea and all the death that they had seen there, and seeing her and thinking of that, it scared him that that could be the only thing he could think of when he sees her, that he could not separate those bloody memories from the friendship he had formed with her. But the tears that he had cried when he saw her did not just come from that pain, but from the joy of seeing someone again, someone who knew what he had been through, someone who knew exactly what not to talk about, someone who knew him over there and still loves him despite all that. And Hawkeye told him about living with his dad after coming home, staying for months, not trusting himself to live alone, scared of what he would do if he was left by himself, Scared he would finally snap from being alone or from his memories or his nightmares or the countless other things that affect him still.

And BJ told Hawkeye how he couldn’t sit still for three weeks, needing to move, to do something, as if he stopped moving then people would die. He told him how his hands had shook the first time he went back to work, how he almost yelled for another body when he finished his first surgery, stopping himself just before the words left his lips. He told him how for five months he couldn’t sleep for stretches longer than three hours, his body waking him involuntarily, or his mind waking him with nightmares and the distinct sound of a pa system echoing in his ears. He told him about how he couldn’t talk to Peg about it, how if he tried, the words died in his throat because he couldn’t bring that bloodshed into her life, couldn’t burden her with the bodies that already hung over him.

It still haunts them; the war still wakes them up at night, but with the solid shape of another person next to you, someone who understands the nightmare that just woke you, it’s easier to deal with, to work through. The war will always be with them, they both know it, as solid an attachment to them as their lungs, but the haunting of a ghost does not loom as large when you are in the arms of someone you love. They can live with this ghost, comfort it instead of ignore it, hear its misery instead of shutting it out.

And dealing with it, dealing with the trauma of war and all the things that seemed too big to ever speak about again, has led them to here: Hawkeye making a joke out of the truth, humor not covering his feelings, but making them bearable. “I think I would have lost my mind if I came in here and couldn’t find the mayonnaise.”

“Then show me where the mayonnaise is. It’s next on the list.” BJ flashes a smile and flips the list so Hawkeye can read it. “Come on. Dazzle me with your knowledge of these aisles.”

“You know, you’re really annoying when we shop together.” Hawkeye says but starts to push the cart anyways. “This is why I never come with you.”

“I don’t let you come because you never buy what’s on the list.” The last time BJ had sent Hawkeye to the store to get a bag of sugar and a gallon of milk, he had come home with three bags of groceries, ranging from bread to fruit, everything one could want, except sugar and milk.

“Oh pish posh,” Hawkeye waves him off as he pulls a box of cereal off the shelf and tosses it into the cart. It isn’t on the list, but BJ doesn’t say anything.

They find the mayonnaise, aisle five, just like always, and they slowly work their way through Daniel’s list until they’re standing in front of the oranges, a pile of apples to their right, pears behind them.

“You heard what Erin said earlier?” Hawkeye picks up an orange, comparing it to the one in his other hand. He isn’t looking at BJ as he speaks. “She called my dad grandpa.”

Hawkeye’s voice is quiet and something not quite a smile is lingering on his face as he looks between the oranges, as if he is speaking to them. BJ smiles and takes a step closer. They aren’t touching, but it’s as close as they can be. He can hear Hawkye breathing, still calm and steady.

“It was nice,” BJ says and picks up an orange himself, giving him a better excuse to be standing there. They’re quiet for a moment, the soft din of the grocery store almost comforting. “It’s fitting, don’t you think.”

Hawkeye finally turns his head to him, a look close to shock on his face. They’ve been through this before, this insecurity Hawkeye always circles back to: that he isn’t a part of BJ’s family, one of Erin’s parents in his own right. It’s the lingering fear that he will be left, that he is temporary so he should be considered as such. And BJ has told him before, every time this has come up, that he isn’t temporary, that BJ is here to stay until Hawkeye gets sick of him, and then even after that. BJ will tell him every day if he needs to, if it will get Hawkeye to believe that he won’t leave him, not this time.

“Your Erin’s dad,” BJ continues, turning the orange around in his hand. He wants to reach out to Hawkeye, to take his hand in his, but he can’t, so he doesn’t, settling for the orange instead. “So of course Daniel is her grandfather.”

“Beej,” Hawkeye starts but can’t find the words to continue. There is this longing in his eyes as he looks at BJ, something no words can come close to explaining.

“Hawk, how many times do I have to say it? You, your family, they’re a part of Erin’s life. You’re her family, just the same as Peg and I are,” BJ smiles now, hoping to communicate even a fraction of the love he is feeling. Sometimes it still catches him by surprise, this love for Hawkeye, love of his eyes and his laugh and even his insecurities. Love that will always want to reassure Hawkeye that he is here to stay. “Erin loves you, Hawk. I love you, and you’re going to be a part of my life whether you like it or not. I’m not going to leave you. Ever.”

Hawkeye looks away, back to the safety of the oranges, as if eye contact right now will send him over the edge, plummeting to the ground, unable to hold himself back. “That sounds an awful lot like a proposal,” Hawkeye looks up with a smile now. He leans towards him slightly and lowers his voice. “BJ Hunnicutt, are you proposing in the produce section?”

“You always were the apple of my eye,” BJ says casually, humor automatically taking over. But then he stops, setting the orange in his hand back on the pile in front of them, hand lingering on the orange, thinking through everything. Is he proposing? Is that what he is doing right now? Is that what he wants? And what would he be proposing? They can’t get married, not in the traditional sense, the way one does to promise to stay together forever, thinking the word marriage erases all possibility of separating. But BJ has done that once already, and learned the hard way that marriage does not mean forever, does not stop the end from coming.

He looks over at Hawkeye again. Hawkeye is looking at him in a way that appears casual to everyone who doesn’t know him: posture relaxed and face calm, near emotionless waiting for whatever response is coming. But BJ knows Hawkeye, can see the way his shoulders are tense and whatever emotions that usually fill his eyes are shielded, preemptively protecting himself from the future. And BJ thinks about what Hawkeye is waiting for, proposal, marriage, everything that that brings along, and BJ knows his response before he can even think the words, because Hawkeye wants this, wants marriage, whatever that means for them.

BJ thinks back, so many years now, to meeting Hawkeye, to asking Hawkeye if he was married, to getting “ _ They’ll have to get me pregnant first _ ” as a reply. And maybe he can’t get Hawkeye pregnant, but he’ll give him a daughter, he’ll give him his whole life. And maybe it’s already marriage, what is between them: living together for so many years, being devoted for so long. So what is one more step, to actually call it what it is. If Hawkeye wants this, then how could he ever deny him?

“Is it a yes, if I was proposing?” BJ asks slowly, cautious, thinking that maybe he didn’t read the situation right, that Hawkeye is just joking. But then Hawkeye’s face shifts, his smile dropping, and BJ knows that if Hawkeye wasn’t holding the oranges, he could be reaching out to hold him, regardless of where they are.

There is a painfully hopeful light in his eyes as he begins to speak. There is no humor in his voice, as if this matter is deadly serious, and it might very well be. If one of them was joking, it would have brought a death of its own. “Yes. Of course I’d say yes.”

“Then marry me, Hawkeye,” BJ doesn't know how he feels this light, how the words can come out easy, how he doesn’t feel crushed by the weight of his life, of what he is saying. He takes it, takes this peace, this solid love inside him, because maybe this is how love should feel, how love does feel, how love will always feel: easy and free.

Hawkeye smiles, the joy spreading slowly across his face. The sight of it makes BJ feel like he is on fire, and he never wants it to be extinguished, something so bright and warm settling over every inch of him, the weight of love holding him to the ground. 

“I would kiss you if my fifth grade teacher wasn’t watching us,” Hawkeye moves his hands instead, setting one orange in BJ’s hand, his fingers trailing along his skin as he moves his hand back. His eyes glance at the woman standing near the lettuce, BJ following his gaze, seeing the woman’s head turn away as they both look at her. 

For the last few minutes, the world was only him and Hawkeye, all the rest falling away, unimportant, irrelevant to what was before him. Now, his surroundings suddenly come back at him at full force, the grocery store feeling impossibly small, the handful of people shopping around them unwanted strangers. Part of him, somewhere deep at the back of his mind, tells him he needs to leave, that he needs to be anywhere but here, but with a single look at Hawkeye, that small voice is silenced. As long as he’s at Hawkeye’s side, he feels like he could do anything, endure everything.

BJ turns back to the cart, setting the orange down beside the box of cereal. “We should get back. We don’t want your dad to bore Erin to death,”

“My dad is not boring!” Hawkeye is draped over the handlebars of the cart again, mouth open in shock, falling into this argument with ease.

“He once told me a forty minute story about planting a single cucumber,” BJ smiles, leaning against the cart as Hawkeye pushes it towards the check out. “Eating a sock would have been more interesting.”

“You are making that up,” Hawkeye points at him. “I doubt he has ever grown a cucumber in his life. I would have remembered a story like this.”

BJ gives him a look, and he feels so light, talking with Hawkeye, smiling with him, loving him. “You don’t remember because you fell asleep five minutes into his story.”

It makes Hawkeye laugh, the sound echoing in the cavernous space of the grocery store. It’s loud and obnoxious, and he leans heavily into the handle bars, the cart coming to a stop, and BJ loves it, could listen to the sound for hours, never wanting it to cease.

They leave the store and in the car, Hawkeye does kiss him, a small press against his cheek as he drives, but it means more than just a kiss on a cheek, like a confirmation of BJ’s proposal, a final, indisputable yes to the question. BJ smiles and takes his hand, squeezing it in his own answer to what is between them, reassurance that he wants this too.

Two weeks later, Hawkeye comes home with rings. They're back home, back in California, and they haven’t talked about it since, haven’t discussed anything, haven’t mentioned a thing. But Hawkeye finds BJ in the living room and sits himself down on the arm of his chair like BJ is expecting him to be there. He hands one of the boxes over without saying anything and BJ opens it wordlessly, already knowing what Hawkeye is giving him before he sees it.

The rings are simple silver bands, exactly the same, and BJ feels close to crying, seeing the ring in the box, the matching one being held by Hawkeye. And it’s strange, the sudden emotion he feels, because he didn’t think it would be like this. To call what is between them a marriage is one thing, but to signify it with rings, to silently bind themselves together with matching silver bands, it is different, a level to this that BJ didn’t anticipate. 

But, staring at the ring in his hand and feeling so much joy he might very well have died because no single person could ever feel like this, BJ fully realizes that he wants this as much as Hawkeye does: to be married again. And after Peg, after watching his own marriage slowly fall apart the second he left for Korea and completely collapsed once he got home, he didn’t think he would ever want this again, could ever want this again, to be married. The pressure and the expectation that simple word entails, and his own history with the word feeling too big to grapple with, too much to move past, 

But maybe it’s that time has passed and the wound marriage has left in him has finally closed; or maybe it’s that he knows Hawkeye wants this, wants marriage, something he never thought he would get, and BJ would do anything to give this to him; or maybe it’s just love, simple as that. Love driving BJ towards this, love always pulling them together, love healing and fixing all that had gone wrong in the past.

BJ puts on the ring and runs his thumb across the band. It’s different from when he married Peg; everything about this moment is in sharp contrast to that last time he had put on a wedding ring. There’s no ceremony, no crowd of people watching, no document signifying this union is binding. In the eyes of the state, in the eyes of the government, they aren’t married, but they have never cared about what the government says before, so how could they care now. The marriage between Peg and him was all legal, the document creating the partnership, molding the love around it, but with Hawkeye, there’s nothing but love forming this union, a formal document useless in the immensity of their love. 

The love itself is different, too; something light making his heart beat in this throat feeling so different from the heaviness he felt as he watched Peg walk down the aisle towards him, the almost suffocating prospect of the future hanging over his head as he spoke the binding words of “ _ I Do _ ”.

He doesn’t say those words now, doesn’t need to, because this isn’t that, this isn’t a wedding, isn’t a performance of their love for their friends and family. This is just a marriage, quiet and comforting, the moment only for the two of them. BJ looks over and sees that Hawkeye has his own ring on, the light hitting the band for a moment, and everything feels right, like BJ could be nowhere else in the world except right here in front of Hawkeye. 

He takes Hawkeye’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “They’re nice,” BJ says because what else would he say? Everything he thinks of is too large to be spoken, so he settles with the truth, small and delicate, the words like a beating heart in his hands. “I love them.”

“Peg helped me pick them out,” Hawkeye smiles and turns their hands so he can look at BJ’s ring. Their house is quiet and outside a car passes down the street and all BJ can focus on is Hawkeye, sitting there before him, staring at his hand with such fondness it’s like he’s looking upon salvation.

This very well might be salvation, BJ thinks. The dreamed about promise land, the end to their long journey. And a moment springs to mind, of years before, when they were leaving each other. Hawkeye had asked him if he would hold him in his arms as he dies, the question thrown out in a fit of anger, about leaving and losing and lies, and BJ understands now just what he was asking then. It was about devotion, a longevity of love, a comfort till the end. A comfort  _ in _ the end. 

When Hawkeye asked the question, it was buried under thousands of layers of other questions and feelings and lies, wrapped all in the sickening reality of them leaving each other. But what Hawkeye was asking, what he was trying to confess in the warped way all their confessions got, was if he would stay till the end, whenever that may come, and love him, even then. And maybe that was how Hawkeye saw the end then, with them leaving each other in Korea, never to see each other again, and all he wanted before he left was a goodbye, the words the comforting arms around him as he dies. 

The end was inevitable then; they were leaving regardless of what they said to each other, but he was asking him if the end could be okay, if they could still love each other even as they left. The end has changed now, yet the question still echoes in BJ’s ears, if he would hold him as he dies. The threat of leaving is gone, but the possibility of forever is upon them, and it  _ is  _ salvation: to be certain about the future, to know that you will be loved, that you will be comforted. That someone would hold you in their arms as you died.

BJ moves and hugs Hawkeye, pulling him into his arms, and he hopes that he’ll understand what he means by this, that he is answering a question long since asked. Hawkeye’s arms wrap around him, their weight strong and steady around his body, and maybe he does understand what BJ is saying, understands the future that is now before them, and understands that maybe the end will come, that it comes to all, they know better than most that death is not a thing one can beat, but there will still be love in the end, and more than anything, the rings on their fingers are a testament to that. 

Years later. Fifteen, twenty, maybe it doesn't matter, maybe all that matters is that they’re back in Maine, living in the house BJ had shown up on the doorstep all those years ago. They’re on the porch, sitting in the quiet evening of summer, the crickets loud around them. In the distance a dog is barking, and BJ knows it is Mrs. Ginsberg dog just by the sound. Next to him, Hawkeye is rummaging through a box of his old things. They had found it when they were cleaning out his old bedroom, the one at his father’s place, a box he hasn’t seen in years, forgotten about until he had slipped it out from under his bed. BJ doesn't ask what’s in it, waiting for Hawkeye to tell him eventually, knowing he will when he finds something worth sharing.

“Look at this, Beej,” Hawkeye holds an envelope up to eye level and then back to his lap before he begins to pull out the stack of folded paper from inside. The paper is old and soft, worn down from hands constantly holding it. His fingers are light, touching the paper with care, like it might crumble in his hands at any second, like he is deathly afraid of losing it. “It’s the letter you sent me.”

The words hit BJ before he can even look over at Hawkeye, something long since healed prickling in his chest, a phantom pain of a distant memory, a time when he was living in California in a marriage he thought was happy but was destined to end even before it began; a time when he had waited 4 months for a letter in the mail; a time when he could not even bring himself to think Hawkeye’s name, let alone imagine where they are now. He never asked about the letter, something in that question seeming too large for what was between them in the beginning, and over the years, BJ had just forgotten about it. 

Now, seeing how worn the pages are, how delicately Hawkeye is holding them, a look in his eyes of hopeless nostalgia, BJ tries to wrap his head around it all. How Hawkeye must have read the letter hundreds of times to get the pages looking like they do; how BJ had done the same with Hawkeye’s letter, rereading the words just to feel close to him, even when there were thousands of miles separating them and his face was only a memory.

BJ thinks he might cry when Hawkeye finally takes his eyes away from the letter to look at him. He has his own tears in his eyes and he folds the pages along their creases, movements slow, careful. “I’m sorry it took me so long to respond,” Hawkeye says, voice quiet, apologizing for something years in the past, something that BJ never needed an apology for. “I must have read this letter a thousand times before I got the nerve to even try to write you back.”

“It was worth it, waiting those four months. It led me back to you,” BJ smiles, knowing his words are true. He could have waited a year for Hawkeye to respond, even more if it meant he would still end up here: sitting at Hawkeye’s side, the comforting weight of love resting around them like a blanket. BJ has stopped worrying about the years they spent apart, all the years before they met and that year after they parted, because it all pales in comparison to what he has now: Hawkeye looking at him like he’s the most beautiful sight he has even seen, and years of love between them that makes the years apart nothing more than a long forgotten memory. It doesn't matter how he got here, because what he has now, he wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Hawkeye smiles, the smile he saves for BJ, secretive and affectionate, love seeping out of it, but then it grows into something louder, humor lighting up his face. BJ is already rolling his eyes before Hawkeye speaks. “Beej, you’ve grown soft in your old age.”

“And yet you still love me,” BJ can’t help but smile again, the knowledge of being loved by Hawkeye still shaking him to his core even after all these years. Hawkeye sets the old letter down on his lap and reaches across the foot of distance between their two chairs, grabbing BJ’s hand. The ring that sits on his left hand is cold against BJ’s fingers.

“I always will,” Hawkeye pulls their clasped hands towards him and plants a light kiss on BJ’s knuckles.

BJ squeezes Hawkeye’s hand, love beating strong in his chest. And this evening isn't special: they spend hundreds of evenings sitting out on their porch, sometimes reading, or playing chess, or doing nothing more than being with each other, and BJ loves each and every moment, still falling deeper in love with Hawkeye with every smile and joke and laugh. This evening isn’t any different, the love filling BJ like the sun, fire deep inside that warms him and makes his heart beat. 

Hawkeye lets their joined hands fall between them, each still holding the other’s hand tightly as he turns back to the box in front of him, looking around at the memories of his past.The past is still a heavy thing, but there is happiness there too, when you look in the right spots. And its history they have to live with, the actions of the past can never be changed, and it’s history in that box before Hawkeye, a bittersweet memory of the past, but sometimes all you can do is accept the past, accept it with a heavy heart and even a guilty conscious. Accept it and live with it and learn to love despite it, or because of it.

BJ watches Hawkeye dig through the box, the side of his face a painting of memory in of itself, the man in front of his a silhouette of the young man he met in Korea, hair almost completely grey now and age set into the skin and the lines of his face, but it is the same, the smile the same, the love the same. BJ feels peace, watching him, like a heavy weight in his lungs, holding him to the steady ground, love like gravity keeping him in Hawkeye’s orbit. And he knows this moment, as all the moments he spends with Hawkeye are, is right. That this is where he’s meant to be.

BJ breathes easy as Hawkeye pulls another object from the box and begins to rattle on about the story behind it. And BJ loves easily: loves the house they are in; loves the life he has; loves his daughter who is coming to visit them next week; loves Peg and Joan and the letters he writers her every week; loves how crickets sound in Maine; loves the neighbors in Crabapple Cove and the town he has grown to know; loves the way Hawkeye makes his tea for him every morning; loves the sweaters Hawkeye has knitted for him; loves waking up every morning to the sunlight streaming in from their bedroom window.

And more than anything, a love that puts all the rest to shame, he loves Hawkeye, and the best thing is, Hawkeye loves him the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, it means a lot that you read this story <3


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